The Canadian Museum of Nature’s Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP) records and collects various species in the woods and wetlands surrounding its research and collections facility in Gatineau, Quebec, and on its property in Osgoode, Ontario.
This summer, we were fortunate to be EMP students, organizing environmental surveys at the two sites. We worked under the supervision of Senior Research Assistant in Botany, Paul Sokoloff, and Assistant Collections Manager in Zoology, Gregory Rand, as well as other museum staff.
Among many projects, we collected and studied the bryophytes – mosses and liverworts – found at the Gatineau and Osgoode sites.
Mosses are non-vascular plants that have been around for 450 million years and are found on every continent in the world. They have rhizoids instead of roots to hold onto surfaces and soak up moisture. They also have leaf-like structures that are usually only a single cell layer thick, which spiral around a stem-like structure.
Mosses dry up when there is a lack of moisture, but miraculously spring back to life when moisture returns. They reproduce in an unusual manner, releasing spores from a stalked capsule, which can be carried by air, water, or unsuspecting animals, allowing new mosses to grow.
Some of the mosses we found proved especially resilient to human impacts on the environment, with human debris becoming their new home. For example, we found an old moss-covered leather glove, and tracked the growth of New York scalewort (Frullania eboracensis) growing over some old flagging tape. Nature’s fighting back!
An extensive bryophyte survey was completed in 2000, but the museum has only occasionally collected moss specimens from the sites since then. It was important to update the records to be able to monitor changes over time, so we devoted lots of hard work to identify the bryophytes present on the two museum properties today.
We collected mosses and placed them in paper bags labeled with the date and location the specimens were found. We cleaned, dried, and froze the specimens to prevent any stowaway pests or organisms from damaging the samples. We then documented and added the specimens to the museum’s Botany Collection – the National Herbarium of Canada – for future reference.
We were fortunate to work alongside Jennifer Doubt, Curator of Botany, who helped us identify specimens and add them to the museum’s Botany Collection. Over the summer, we collected 131 mosses from the Gatineau and Osgoode sites. These included 14 new species for the sites, which was an exciting addition to the collection, as well as several species that had not been observed since the initial large survey completed in 2000.
Meanwhile, Paul Hamilton, Senior Research Assistant in Botany, led us on an exciting project to examine the world of diatoms on mosses. The goal was to collect, isolate and photograph the diatoms collected, and identify and add them to the museum’s Botany Collection.
Diatoms are unicellular algae protected by silica plates (a kind of “glass house”!) that use photosynthesis to produce their energy. They help produce the oxygen we breathe (up to 30%!) and scientists can interpret the species present, and their abundance, to determine properties of their environment, such as pH, salinity, nutrient concentration, and more. Diatoms are well known aquatic (marine and freshwater) organisms, but are also found on mosses, soil, and other moist terrestrial substrates.
All in all, we had a great summer learning all about bryophytes and diatoms, and we can’t wait to see what future EMP students find!
