This past week saw my husband and two close friends from grad school defend their Ph.D. dissertations—one of whom I taught during their undergrad! I’m so proud! Also, apparently, old. Makes me nostalgic for my own Ph.D. “glory days”, finished in 2011, so for funsies I made word cloud of my thesis. Behold!
Jibberish, you say? Ha! Welcome to the world of taxonomy! Abandon all hope (of jargon-free language), ye who enter here.
My PhD research focused on figuring out how many species of the red seaweed family Kallymeniaceae (Phylum Rhodophyta; Class Florideophyceae) we have in Canada and how to tell those species apart from one another using a combination of physical features— shape, size, colour, where they live, etc.—and similarity in DNA. These are a few of the beautiful beasts I studied:
Long story short, my supervisor and I found that there are many more species in this family than were previously recognized. Here’s a summary of how many new species and records we found in the 9 genera* reported in Canada:
*“Genera” is the plural of “genus” and there were only 9 reported before my work; we found a previously-unreported Russian genus (Beringia) and discovered a brand new one (Salishia).
What’s crazy is that we found a 55% increase in the number of species reported for this family in Canada, and Canadian waters are traditionally thought of as having a depauperate (or species-poor) flora compared to biodiversity “hot-spots” like Australia. Some species were already known from other parts of the world, like Russia, and we found them for the first time in Canada. Others were brand spankin’ new and we got to name them. My favourite of course is my first species discovery, the one I named Euthora timburtonii for the film maker Tim Burton. Because, reasons. The CBC thought it was newsworthy, which was good for a giggle.
Whole project sound simple? Double ha! I’ll spare you the dull bits: nights hunched over a microscope measuring cells, meticulously managing spreadsheets of data, crying when one mistake cost days to fix, that night I cracked and accused a DNA sample of lying.
The highlights were many: traveling all over North America to collect seaweed samples from the most beautiful rocky coasts imaginable, scuba diving with beluga whales in the sub-Arctic, getting my very first scientific paper published, discovering new species and getting to name them, hanging with fellow phycophiles (seaweed lovers) every year at the Northeast Algal Symposium. I was a lucky duck during grad school, with a deep support network.
Anyhoo, nostalgia trip over. My thesis chapters were all published—hooray!—and are linked below for anyone interested in the details. I’m so proud of my hubby and friends for their accomplishments and look forward to their word cloud-walks down memory lane in the not-too-distant future.
Peer-Reviewed Publications on Seaweeds:
Clarkston, B.E. and Saunders, G.W. 2013. Resolving species diversity in the red algal genus Callophyllis (Gigartinales, Floroideophyceae) in Canada using molecular assisted alpha taxonomy. European Journal of Phycology, 48(1): 27-46. European J Phy 2013 Clarkston pdf
Clarkston, B.E. and Saunders, G.W. 2012. An examination of the red algal genus Pugetia (Kallymeniaceae, Gigartinales) with descriptions of Salishia firma gen. et comb. nov., Pugetia cryptica sp. nov., and Beringia wynnei sp. nov. Phycologia 51(1): 33–61.Phycol 2012 Clarkston pdf
Clarkston, B.E. and Saunders, G.W. 2010. A comparison of two DNA barcode markers for species discrimination in the red algal family Kallymeniaceae (Gigartinales, Florideophyceae), with a description of Euthora timburtonii sp.nov. Botany 88(2): 119-131. Botany 2010 Clarkston pdf
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