Siliceous and Delicious

It’s a little later than I had hoped, again, but the weather was beautiful this morning and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice an 8-miler in favor of an extra hour of work. I’m sure that time will come soon enough in the course of my PhD… No use in burning out before the finish line is even in sight. (Just to confuse things by throwing in a work-sport metaphor in distinguishing work and sport priorities.) Right now, though, I want to sprint through the ten remaining genera on my list, so I can make that first trip over to the Herbarium and throw myself into the delightful must of real paper.

Rylandsia. Round mentions the genus in the section on Asterolampra, and refers to a 1980 paper by Gombos, which is in the Farlow, and I’ve put on my list. Two species are described in the Bolli volume, which may help a little. I’ve got a paper on the list, so I’m moving on. To keep things moving. If the Gombos paper doesn’t deliver, I can always invest more time in googlation then.

Sceptroneis. This genus is actually in Round, so I must have just skipped that line in the Excel file accidentally. Awesome. Even better, the next entry in the list is a misspelling of Sceptroneis, so on I go.

Simonseniella and Simonsenella (of which presumably one is misspelled) are not in Round at all, although there is an entry for Simonsenia, with a reference to a 1979 paper in the journal Bacillaria. Fortunately, AlgaeBase had a cryptic reference to a 1991 paper by Fenner (which I eventually found, via a chain of references in several other papers, to be in the ODP SR), where this genus is erected. It refers to SEM images in an ODP IR paper, 1985 by Akiba and Yanagisawa. Struggled a little in describing this taxon on my character key, because its valves are vertically elongated (like Rhizosolenia, from which the genus was split), and it’s not clear whether it’s correct to refer to the steep sides of the valve as mantles or as an inclined valve face…

Sphynctolethus. Round mentions this genus as a link between Hemiaulus and the extant Hemiauloideae, and refers to a 1986 paper by Sims for a description. This reference (need I even say it?) is in the Farlow, so onto the list it goes. Round also—alert, project idea!—suggests that:

“There is little doubt that selection since the Cretaceous has eliminated many species of Hemiaulus, leaving only the lightly silicified, rather delicate forms.”

Would be possible application of the FIB technique, applied only to one, more narrowly-cast clade, to measure changes in silicification through time.

Stephanogonia. This is an Ehrenberg genus, original reference from 1844. And as much as I admire Ehrenberg, I’m not confident that’ll be a terrifically useful description for my purposes. Web of Knowledge throws up a Hungarian conference volume from 1982… if there’s nothing else, perhaps I’ll try to retrieve that (it’s in the periodicals section in the science library). Page 437 in Van Heurck has a terse few words and a basic sketch. Found an LM image in a DSDP report, by Hajós, 1976, but nothing else, and decided to move along.

Trochosira. The appendix in Round refers to a 1988 paper by Sims in Diatom Research, that promises a recent description. Added to list.

Tropidoneis. Round suggests on p. 588 that Reimer (in Patrick & Reimer, 1975) reason for calling Tropidoneis by the name Round uses, Plagiotropis. It’s not clear what the reasoning for retaining the name would be, or whether I should just go ahead and code these two genera under the same name. Perhaps that’s what I should do, since it appears that Plagiotropis doesn’t actually show up in the Neptune genus list, so I’m not confusing things too much.

And, finally (yes!), Xanthiopyxis, again appears on the list of genera in Round (p. 52) deemed to be resting stages of, possibly, Chaetoceros. And, with that, I’m through—it’s 1:29 on Friday, and I’ve achieved my goal! Albeit, my baseline minimal goal, but I do still have an afternoon, and I’ve achieved a goal I set myself.

The next step is to put together my list of references for clarity, so that I can just hand it over to the Farlow librarian. Upon checking the Farlow library’s website, I realized I won’t actually be able to go and retrieve my materials until Monday, since they are only open weekdays from 9-noon. Compiling the list took me up until cookie hour, after which it was time to (very quickly!) skim through the assigned reading for lab meeting (yech).

And that was that for the day, and for the second big push. Ended with a bit of a fizzle, but I got a lot done—I’m closer to my goal in this project than I ever have been. So I’m going to pat myself on the back a little. Pat, pat. Well done.