This is a list of recent media reports regarding the IAB conference in Puerto Williams, the announcement of federal support for research in subantarctic Chile and the attendance of President Michelle Bachelet at the inauguration of the conference.

Date	Title	Medialinks
January 4	Científicos que estudian los musgos se reunirán en Congreso Mundial en Puerto Williams	La Prensa Austral
January 4	Estudiantes extranjeros llegan a Magallanes atraídos por la briología y ética ambiental	El Pingüino
January 5	Estudiantes extranjeros llegan atraídos por la briología y ética ambiental	Radio Magallanes
January 7	Un centenar de científicos asistirán a Congreso de Briología en Cabo de Hornos	La VanguardiaYahoo NoticiasPura Noticia

January 8	Científicos asistirán a Congreso de Briología en Chile	El Mundo.comEl Salvador. Las noticias de El SalvadorVea Noticia (El Salvador)
January 9	Presidenta Bachelet llega este domingo a Magallanes	La Prensa Austral
January 9	Se confirma, Presidenta Bachelet llega este domingo a Punta Arenas	Polar Comunicaciones
January 9	Puerto Williams se convertirá en la capital de los musgos	Radio Magallanes
January 9	Ecoturismo con lupa para descubrir el mundo de los musgos	Sustentare
January 9	Puerto Williams se convierte en la capital mundial de los musgos	Portal de Prensa de la UMAG
January 9	Puerto Williams se convierte en la capital mundial de los musgos	Diario El Pingüino
January 10	Científicos de todo el mundo se reúnen en Puerto Williams, capital mundial de los musgos	Prensa Antártica
January 11	Presidenta Bachelet viene a inaugurar Congreso de Briología y nuevo ferry pathagon de Tabsa	La Prensa Austral
January 11	Biólogos destacan en cabo de Hornos el 5% de la Briósfera Mundial	Polar Comunicaciones
January 11	Earthquakes, tsunamis and a naked tribe. It’s Chile – and not just the Galápagos – that inspired Darwin	The Guardian
January 11	El Pingüino: Bachelet concreta hoy segunda visita a la región: Pasará por Puerto Williams y Porvenir	El Pingüino
January 11	Presidenta Michelle Bachelet llega al Aeropuerto de Punta Arenas	Radio Magallanes
January 11	Puerto Williams se convierte en la capital mundial de los musgos	Polar Comunicaciones
January 11	Presidenta Bachelet arribará esta tarde a Magallanes	Polar Comunicaciones
January 11	Ciencia con ética es la clave en la preservación subantártica de Cabo de Hornos	Polar Comunicaciones
January 11	Ya se encuentra en Magallanes Presidenta Bachelet	Polar Comunicaciones
January 11	Ciencia ética es clave preservación subantártica Cabo de Hornos sostiene ecólogo	La Gran Época
January 12	Presidenta Bachelet destaca cambios e Puerto Williams	Polar Comunicaciones
January 12	Presidenta Bachelet entregó comodato a la MAG para construir Centro Cabo de Hornos	Noticias UMAG
January 12	Presidenta Michelle Bachelet “Este año vamos a invertir más de 29 mil millones de pesos en puerto Williams”	La Prensa Austral
January 12	Mandataria en Puerto Williams“Este es un lugar que conserva una enorme biodiversidad, pero que abre también una oportunidad fantástica para la educación ambiental”	Polar Comunicaciones
January 12	El Pingüino: Presidenta Bachelet anunció inversiones por 29 mil millones en Puerto Williams para el 2015	El Pingüino
January 12	Magallanes contará con un Centro de Investigación Subantártia	El Pulso
January 12	Extremo Sur de Chile contará con Centro Subantártico	Estrategia
January 12	Presidenta Bachelet entregó comodato a la MAG para construir Centro Cabo de Hornos	El Pingüino

January 12	Puerto Williams se convierte en la capital mundial de los musgos	Radio Presidente Ibañez
January 12	Bachelet: Inversiones por 29 Mil Millones de Pesos para Puerto Williams y Fibra Óptica para Porvenir	El Patagónico
January 12	Presidenta Bachelet en Puerto Williams: “Este año vamos a invertir más de 29 mil millones de pesos en sus proyectos” (Presidency of the Republic of Chile)	WN.com
January 12	Presidenta Bachelet en Puerto Williams: “Este año vamos a invertir más de 29 mil millones de pesos en sus proyectos”	Noodls
January 13	Presidenta chilena anuncia inauguración de centro en singularidades ecológicas en Antártida	Spanish People daily
January 13	Presidenta Bachelet aseguró inversión de $ 29.000.000 para Puerto Williams	Portal de Prensa de la Municipalidad Cabo de Hornos
January 13	Mandataria en Puerto Williams: “Este es un lugar que conserva una enorme biodiversidad, pero que abre también una oportunidad fantástica para la educación ambiental”	Portal de Prensa de la Presidencia

January 13	Presidenta Bachelet en compañía del Ministro Badenier inauguran Congreso de Briología en Magallanes	Portal de Prensa del Ministerio del Medio Ambiente
January 13	Michelle Bachelet en Puerto Williams: “Este es un lugar que conserva una enorme biodiversidad”	Prensa Antártica
January 14	Presidenta Bachelet entregó comodato a la Universidad de Magallanes para construir “Centro Cabo de Hornos”	Portal de Prensa Universidades Estatales
January 19	Ciencia en Chile: El diminuto universo de musgos que aporta valiosa información sobre cambio climático	The Clinic Today
January 19	CIENCIADiminuto universo de musgos aporta valiosa información sobre cambio climático	TERRA
January 19	Ciencia en Chile: El diminuto universo de musgos que aporta valiosa información sobre cambio climático – The Clinic Online	Ciencia
January 21	Novedades científicas marcaron congreso mundial de los musgos en reserva de biósfera Cabo de Hornos	Prensa Antártica
January 22	Las briófitas aportan información sobre el calentamiento	Eco-sitio. Noticias Ambientales Internacionales

The International Association of Bryologists met in Puerto Williams between Jan. 11–15. Some pictures of the vent are posted here.

Two papers were published this January in the journal Arctoa.

Buck W. R. & B. Goffinet. 2015. Larrainia, a new genus of Amblystegiaceae from the Cape Horn region of Chile. Arctoa 24: 27–31. doi: 10.15298/arctoa.24.05

Ignatov, M.S., E.A. Ignatova, I.V. Czernyadjeva, B. Goffinet, O.I. Kuznetsova & V.E. Fedosov. 2015. Afoninia, a new moss genus of Funariaceae from Transbaikalia 
(East Siberia, Russia). Arctoa 24: 14–20. doi: 10.15298/arctoa.24.02

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet honored participant of the International Association of Bryologists meeting in January 2015 in Puerto William, subantarctic Chile, by attending the inauguration of the conference. In her address she announced further support for scientific research in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve through the construction of a new research and education station in Puerto Williams. At the cocktail following the inauguration, Lily had an opportunity to introduce herself to the President.

Following the 2015 meeting this January in Puerto Williams, subantarctic Chile, of the International Association of Bryologists the following article was published in Spanish and English.

Lily’s work on the potential role of migratory birds in the expansion of geographic ranges of sporic plants, fungi and algae is featured in a Chilean news paper. Click on  Lily_Chile_news.

The study by Laenen et al. on patterns of diversification of bryophytes through time is now published:  Laenen B., B. Shaw, H. Schneider, B. Goffinet, E. Paradis, A. Désamoré, J. Heinrichs, J.C. Villarreal, R. Gradstein, S. McDaniel, D. Long, L. Forrest, M. Hollingsworth, B. Crandall-Stotler, C. Davis, J. Engel, M. von Konrat, D. Cooper, J. Patiño, C.J. Cox, A. Vanderpoorten &  A.J. Shaw. Extant diversity of bryophytes emerged from successive post-Mesozoic diversification bursts. Nature Communications 5, Article number: 5134.

 

Abstract: Unraveling the macroevolutionary history of bryophytes, which arose soon after the origin of land plants but exhibit substantially lower species richness than the more recently derived angiosperms, has been challenged by the scarce fossil record. Here we demonstrate that overall estimates of net species diversification are approximately half those reported in ferns and ∼30% those described for angiosperms. Nevertheless, statistical rate analyses on time-calibrated large-scale phylogenies reveal that mosses and liverworts underwent bursts of diversification since the mid-Mesozoic. The diversification rates further increase in specific lineages towards the Cenozoic to reach, in the most recently derived lineages, values that are comparable to those reported in angiosperms. This suggests that low diversification rates do not fully account for current patterns of bryophyte species richness, and we hypothesize that, as in gymnosperms, the low extant bryophyte species richness also results from massive extinctions.

Lily’s first dissertation chapter is published in the Journal of Biogeography.

Lewis L.R., R. Rozzi & B. Goffinet. 2014. Direct long-distance dispersal shapes a New World amphitropical disjunction in the dispersal-limited dung moss Tetraplodon (Bryopsida: Splachnaceae). Journal of Biogeography 41: 2385–2395.

See details here

Lily (Ph.D. candidate) recently returned from Nepal and is now leaving for PNG on Wednesday July 23 to join an international group of biologists to study “Community composition of bryophyte and fern assemblages along an elevational gradients in Papua New Guinea”. What an experience!

The Project Investigators on the project are: Dr. Dirk Nikolaus Karger (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Dr. Marcus Lehnert (University of Bonn, Germany), Prof. Dr. Vojtech Novotny (The New Guinea Binatang Research Center), Dr. Michael Sundue (University of Vermont, USA), Dr. Boon-Chuan Ho (The SING Herbarium, Singapore), Sarah Noben, Msc. (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Karola Maul, Msc. (University of Bonn, Germany).

 

The study by Liu Y., C.J. Cox, W. Wang & B. Goffinet, entitled “Mitochondrial Phylogenomics of Early Land Plants: Mitigating the Effects of Saturation, Compositional Heterogeneity, and Codon-usage Bias” is published in Systematic Biology 63: 862–878.

Abstract: Phylogenetic analyses using concatenation of genomic-scale data have been seen as the panacea for resolving the incongruences among inferences from few or single genes. However, phylogenomics may also suffer from systematic errors, due to the, perhaps cumulative, effects of saturation, among-taxa compositional (GC content) heterogeneity, or codon-usage bias plaguing the individual nucleotide loci that are concatenated. Here we provide an example of how these factors affect the inferences of the phylogeny of early land plants based on mitochondrial genomic data. Mitochondrial sequences evolve slowly in plants and hence are thought to be suitable for resolving deep relationships. We newly assembled mitochondrial genomes from 20 bryophytes, complemented these with 40 other streptophytes (land plants plus algal outgroups), compiling a data matrix of 60 taxa and 41 mitochondrial genes. Homogeneous analyses of the concatenated nucleotide data resolve mosses as sister-group to the remaining land plants. However, the corresponding translated amino acid data support the liverwort lineage in this position. Both results receive weak to moderate support in maximum likelihood analyses, but strong support in Bayesian inferences. Tests of alternative hypotheses using either nucleotide or amino-acid data provide implicit support for their respective optimal topologies, and clearly reject the hypotheses that bryophytes are monophyletic, liverworts and mosses share a unique common ancestor, or hornworts are sister to the remaining land plants. We determined that land plant lineages differ in their nucleotide composition, and in their usage of synonymous codon variants. Composition heterogeneous Bayesian analyses employing a non-stationary model that accounts for variation in among-lineage composition, and inferences from degenerated nucleotide data that avoids the effects of synonymous substitutions that underlie codon-usage bias, again recovered liverworts being sister to the remaining land plants but without support. These analyses indicate that the inference of an early-branching moss lineage based on the nucleotide data is caused by convergent compositional biases. Accommodating among-site amino acid compositional heterogeneity (CAT-model) yields no support for the optimal resolution of liverwort as sister to the rest of land plants, suggesting that the robust inference of the liverwort position in homogeneous analyses may be due in part to compositional biases among sites. All analyses support a paraphyletic bryophytes with hornworts composing the sister group to tracheophytes. We conclude that while genomic data may generate highly supported phylogenetic trees, these inferences may be artifacts. We suggest that phylogenomic analyses should assess the possible impact of potential biases through comparisons of protein-coding gene data and their amino-acid translations by evaluating the impact of substitutional saturation, synonymous substitutions, and compositional biases through data deletion strategies and by analyzing the data using heterogeneous composition models. We caution against relying on any one presentation of the data (nucleotide or amino acid) or any one type of analysis even when analyzing large-scale data sets, no matter how well-supported, without fully exploring the effects of substitution models.