Extant land plants consist of two deeply divergent groups, tracheophytes and bryophytes, which shared a common ancestor some 500 million years ago. While information about vascular plants and the two of the three lineages of bryophytes, the mosses and liverworts, is steadily accumulating, the biology of hornworts is poorly explored. Yet, as the sister group to liverworts and mosses, hornworts are critical in understanding the evolution of key land plant traits. Until recently, there was no h...

We are happy to share selected contributions from IAB IMOSS SEB 2019, the 2019 International Association of Bryologists (IAB), International Molecular Moss Science Society (iMOSS) and la Sociedad Española de Briología (SEB) joint conference, held in Madrid, Spain, on July 9-12, 2019.  The papers are published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Sciences and listed below: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/11134/highlights-of-iab-imoss-seb-2019-joint-conference#articles  

Each year Laval University launches a competitive process to postulate few candidates to the Canada Research Chairs. This year, the Villarreal Lab was awarded one of the seven Canada Research Chair, two professors of the Faculty of Science and Engineering were granted this competitive award. The 5-year project deals with the symbiosis between tropical plants (especially gymnosperms) and microbes (virus, fungi and bacteria) at a genomic and metabolomic level. The research is mostly based in Pa...

Symbioses between plants and nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria are benchmark biological systems to understand mutualism and patterns of coevolution. The diversity of cyanobacteria associated to non-vascular land plants is still being unraveled, with a huge gap in knowledge from tropical areas, especially in hornworts. Hornworts are arguably the oldest land plant lineage with a widespread symbiosis with cyanobacteria (Villarreal & Renzaglia 2015). We focus on the Neotropical horn...

As part of his undergraduate research project, Philip Bell-Doyon surveyed the Panamanian endemic cycad Zamia pseudoparasitica from May to July 2018 (here a previous paper from his project). The species is the only strictly epiphytic gymnosperm and its life history is little known due to the inaccessibility of the plants. He used single-rope and prussik-knot tree climbing techniques to estimate population density and ant-garden specificity were evaluated. Zamia pseudoparasitica is locally com...

Stigomena is a genus of cyanobacteria that is often the photobiont associated with the lichen genus Stereocaulon. To elucidate the evolutionary relationships between Stereocaulon and Stigonema and assess whether there is specificity or selectivity at the ecosystem or species levels, we performed phylogenetic analyses on specimens collected throughout Eastern Canada. We generated ITS sequences from the fungal component of the symbiosis and sequences from the operon rbcL-rbcX and the trnL ...

Le sexe est répandu dans l’arbre de la vie. La reproduction sexuée est très importante pour la survie et la maintenance de toutes les espèces complexes. Néanmoins, la clonalité et d’autres méthodes de reproduction asexuée existent, particulièrement chez les plantes. L’anthocérote Nothoceros aenigmaticus est un exemple d’une plante qui n’a pas de reproduction sexuée. Par ailleurs, les organes males (anthéridies) ne développent pas de spermatozoïdes fonctionnels. Cette plante se trouve dans le...

We live grim times and our lives have been deeply impacted by the COVID-19. However, we continue to do research, and our remote work (télétravail in French), publishing two articles on our most dear group of plants: the hornworts. Hornworts are probably the most overlooked of all plant groups. In the last weeks, three important papers have been published focused on hornworts. The first paper published by a group of talented Chinese colleagues described the nuclear genome of a dioicous horn...

Dennis and Marta attended the CEN Annual Symposium 2020 in Montreal.   Dennis presented the results of his phylogeographic study on the moss species Racomutrium lanuginosum. Dennis used population genomics tools to assess the phylogeographic structure of this wide-spread moss. The preliminary results suggest the presence of at least three genetic groups in Racomitrium lanuginosum. Here his poster. Marta shared her first results on viral diversity associated with the reindeer lichen...

Marta Alonso García has published a monograph of the moss genus Chionoloma.  Chionoloma belongs to one of the largest moss families, Pottiaceae (1450 species in ca. 77 genera). Her work is based on the morphological analysis of more than 2600 specimens resulting in 22 species and one variety. Marta's work is mine of information on morphology, distribution and biogeography of this moss genus. Congratulations Marta!