What's New at the Mishler Lab PEET Grant

August 2001

Brent Mishler, Dennis Wall, and Joseph Yip travel to Albuquerque, NM. for meeting of the Botanical Society of America, and give the following talks on Calymperaceae:

WALL, DENNIS P. - Population structure and patterns of island radiation in the paleotropic endemic moss, Mitthyridium: insights from a rapidly evolving nuclear gene, glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (gpd).
**This paper won Dennis the A.J. Sharp Award for best student paper presented at the ABLS national meeting!

FISHER, KIRSTEN M. - Ontogenetic changes and their relationship to patterns of reproduction and diversification in a Paleotropical moss species complex, Syrrhopodon involutus.
[This paper was presented by Brent Mishler for Kirsten, who was ill]

YIP, KWOK LEUNG and BRENT D. MISHLER - A reappraisal of the resorption pores of hyalocysts in the Calymperaceae and their phylogenetic significance.

July - August 2001

Kirsten Fisher travels to Madagascar (via London and the British Museum) to collect Mascarene Calymperaceae. Highlights of the trip include witnessing a total solar eclipse, and visiting Parcs National Isalo and Montange d'Ambre.

July 2001

Sean Askay joins research group as a web designer for PEET and related projects. He is also teaching lab students HTML.

June - July 2001

Anya Hinkle traveled to French Polynesia to collect specimens of Levobryaceae, Calymperaceae, and Fissidentaceae. Collections were made on Moorea and Tahiti of the Society Islands and Nuku Hiva, Hiva Oa, Iatu Hiva and Tahuata of the Marqueses Islands.

May 13, 2001

Students from our group won the two top awards at the Integrative Biology graduation ceremony: Dave Des Marais was awarded the LeConte Award (and gave the student speech); Danica Harbaugh was awarded the Departmental Citation.

Spring semester, 2001

Undergraduate researcher Danica Harbaugh began work in the lab on a project involving culture studies, development, and morphometrics of Syrrhopodon confertus.

Undergraduate researcher Rosalyn Sayaman continued work in the lab, but began a senior thesis project, on the biomechanics of water movement through the clumps and leaves of Calymperaceae, that will continue over summer and through next year.

October, 2000

Kwok Leung (Joseph) Yip joins the PEET project as postdoctoral research associate, bringing expertise on anatomy, microscopy, and monographic studies.

August, 2000

John Wheeler departs for his new position as assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

Brent Mishler, Dennis Wall, and Kirsten Fisher travel to Portland Ore. for meeting of the Botanical Society of America, and give the following talks on Calymperaceae:

The heteroblastic series in leucobryoid mosses

Congruence and convergence in the moss family Calymperaceae: phylogenetic analysis of two chloroplast genes (rbcL and rps4) and morphology

Population structure and diversification patterns in the paleotropic endemic moss

Dennis P. Wall collects throughout Borneo and Peninsular Malaysia and vists with collaborator Haji Mohamed.

September, 1999

Brent Mishler traveled to Germany for meetings of the German Botanical Society and Willi Hennig Society, as well as herbarium studies on Calymperaceae in Göttingen and Jena.

Fall Semester, 1999

Rosalyn Sayaman begins to work in the lab as an undergraduate researcher, specializing in data basing, microscopic study, and help in the molecular lab.

August, 1999

Brent Mishler, John Wheeler, Dennis Wall, Kirsten Fisher, and Randy Clayton travel to Carbondale Ill. for meeting of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society and to St. Louis for the International Botanical Congress.

July 1999

Kirsten Fisher travels to the UC Berkeley Gump Station on Moorea in French Polynesia for field studies of the Syrrhopodon involutus complex.

March, 1999

Brent Mishler, Dennis Wall, and Kirsten Fisher travel to Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, for a meeting of the bryophyte subgroup of Deep Green and field work collecting Calymperaceae in the mountains of Veracruz and Oaxaca.

February - March, 1999

Catherine La Farge (a collaborator from University of Alberta) visits the Bryolab at UC Berkeley to work on phylogenetic analyses of haplolepideous mosse

January, 1999

Tony Morosco receives his BA degree from UCB in Integrative Biology; remains with the project as Botanical Programmer/Analyst.

Lab begins beta testing of Mishler LSD Database

December, 1998

Prototype database for tracking sequencing information is developed and ready for beta testing. Database is written as a templates for FileMaker Pro 3.0/4.0 (cross-platform Mac-Windows compatable) and code-named Mishler Lab Sequencing Database (Mishler LSD). Database tracks information through four common steps of sequencing: (1) Genomic Isolation, (2) PCR, (3) PCR Cleanup, and (4) Sequencing. Plans are made to offer it as a PEET product when thouroughly tested. Beta copies are available on request until then.

October 18 - November 25, 1998

Brent Mishler to Malaysia and Singapore for herbarium research and extensive fieldwork with collaborators Ben Tan anf Haji Mohamed. View Bryological Times report of this trip. (Bryological Times, Vol. 97, December, 1998.)

Fall semester, 1998

UC undergraduate students Randy Clayton, Dave DesMarais, and Amy Tang join the lab; Elaine Cheung continues her work.

August 18, 1998

Kirsten Johannes joins the Mishler PEET project as a graduate student researcher.

July 7 - August 31, 1998

Brent Mishler to Australia and New Zealand for herbarium research and extensive fieldwork with collaborators Heinar Streimann and Ray Tangney.

June 10 - June 18, 1998

John Wheeler to Puerto Rico for ABLS meeting, paper presentation and field work.

May 16 - August 31, 1998

Dennis Wall mounts major expedition to the South Pacific; visiting the Society Islands, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa. Dan Norris accompanied Dennis to the Society Islands and New Caledonia.

May 1, 1998

SO BE FREE pages edited.
Bryophyte Herbarium Folder Labels Printed.

April 23 - 24, 1998

New pages added for Lab Field Trips and other photos.
Bryophyte Herbarium Folder List data entry nearing completion.

March 21 - 26, 1998

Brent Mishler, John Wheeler, and Dennis Wall attended the PEET Workshop at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Marine Biological Laboratory.

Feburary 18, 1998

Dr. Bob Magill, Director of Research at the Missouri Botanical Garden has agreed to the use of the data contained in the Index of World Mosses Database (known as MOSs TROPICOS, or MOST) maintained at Missouri Botanical Garden, as the standard reference Authority File for the Mishler PEET herbarium labels.

Feburary 13, 1998

The Authority File for The Mosses of Moorea based on Desloover (1994) is now available for use with the SALADS label making database. See Tony for Setting it up for use.

Feburary 1, 1998

Dr. John Wheeler joins the Mishler PEET project as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant.

Janurary 30, 1998

Elaine Cheung and Tin-Wing (Andy) Wong, both undergraduate students at UC Berkeley, join the Mishler PEET grant. Elaine will be assisting in laboratory preperation work. Andy will be working on data entry for specimen databases and the production of herbarium lables.

Janurary 9, 1998

Tony Morosco , current staff at CalFlora Database Project and undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, joins Mishler PEET grant. Tony will be managing the lab web pages, developing specimen and label databases, and assisting with training graduate students in these areas.

September 1, 1997

Funding begins.
Dennis Wall (who helped write the proposal) begins as a graduate student researcher.