Field Expeditions & Collaborations
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Biology in-context: What's happening in nature?
Biology in-context: What's happening in nature?
While I spend a majority of my time in the lab, my questions aim to explain what is occuring in the natural environment. To stay relevant, we must be inspired by (and go into) nature!
Naples, Italy
Naples, Italy
Descriptions to come!
Barcelona, Spain
Barcelona, Spain
Description to come!
Porto, Portugal
TREC officially started in April 2023, but the Advanced Mobile Lab ("TREC-Truck"; pictured above) was late for the first two stops. So it was not until going to Porto this October that I had the opportunity to see and work in it. This mobile lab is fully-loaded with a high-pressure freezer, plunge freezer, epifluoresence microscope, wide-angle stereomicroscope, confocal microscope, dissecting microscopes, an imaging flow cytometer, chemical hood, culture chambers, and a small wetlab all packed in the back of an expandable semi-trailer for all your sample observation and fixation needs! In addition to the marine plankton, we also sample some photosymbioses from the beach including lichens (top-right), and the famous Roscoff worm (bottom-right)
Tallin, Estonia
Tallin, Estonia
Reporting for duty (Johan Decelle) in in Tallin in June 2023, we were greeted by an incredible bloom of filamentous cyanobaceria. But the star of the site was identifying the symbiotic association between our friends the diatoms and ciliates called 'Vorticella'. We also collected samples of the well known terrestial photosymbiosis between algae and fungi known as 'Lichens'.
The video (left) depicts the contraction and extension of two attached Vorticella as they filter feed from the surrounding seawater. Colleagues from the Vincent Team at EMBL brought theys guys back to Germany to image the root-stalk connection to provide a better understanding on the nature of this symbiosis.
Right-top: A fluoresecently stained confocal image of a Chaetocerous chain with the photosynthetic chloroplast (red), and large vacuolar balloons (green), and the correlary contrast light image of the same cells with the glass cell wall and spines visible.
Roscoff, France
Roscoff, France
April 2023 was the official start of TREC with the expedition kicking off at the Station Biologique de Roscoff in Brittany. The mobile lab was still being assembled so all of the collaborators worked in the historic station which has been operating since 1872.
Middle: the station at low tide.
Right: Sampling in strong current.
To the likes of Darwin and Humboldt, we dragged our tools to the field to study the Roscoff worm (Symsagittifer roscoffiensis). Discovered in 1879 as a photosynthetic animal, it would later be reveal to contain living microalgae cells (Tetraselmis sp.) and one of the first known examples of photosymbiosis!
Left: Fieldwork along the green 'river' of worms
Middle: Roscoff worms in the intertidal
Right: Gliding worms
The start of TREC coincided with the launch of science schooner Tara for its 'Europa' mission to sample alongside TREC over the European coastline. We got a chance visit Tara at it's dock in Lorient and see what life is like on board for its crew.
Hafnarfjörður, Iceland
Hafnarfjörður, Iceland
In the summer of 2022, part of "WeFreezeOnTheBeach" team and new colleagues travelled to the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute (MFRI) to sample coastal waters of Iceland which also served as a pilot mission of the upcoming EMBL TREC (Traversing European Coastlines) global biology initiative. We once again had the rare opportunity to carry out cryo-preservation at a unique field site! And as luck would have it, we also arrived one week after the eruption of Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland and got a spectacular show courtesy of Earth's molten core!
Villefrance-sur-mer
Villefrance-sur-mer
In the summer of 2021, I arrived in France just in time to visit the Oceanic Observatory of Villefranche-sur-mer for "WeFreezeOnTheBeach" which brought state-of-the-art cryofixation expertise from EMBL and Leica to a marine field sampling expedition. It was a unique chance to sample the biologically rich Mediterranean waters (including Acantharia) and an unprecedented opportunity to cryopreserve freshly sampled marine plankton.
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