[Proceedings of the VII international symposium 'Cultural heritage in geosciences, mining and metallurgy : libraries, archives, museums' : "Museums and their collections" held at the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum Leiden (The Netherlands), 19-23 May, 2003 / Cor F. Winkler Prins and Stephen K. Donovan (editors)]: The Kinker diatom collection: discovery - exploration - exploitation

Johannes Kinker (1823-1900) was a typical representative of the Victorian 'amateur-savant'. As a wellto-do stockbroker he was able to invest considerable time and money into studies of nature, first entomology and subsequently diatoms. The latter subject flourished in the late 19th century and, among his international contemporaries, Kinker was regarded as "the only Dutch diatomist of renown". There is a marked discrepancy between this reputation in his own time and his complete obscurity since, for which there are two reasons; Kinker did not publish, and his collection was not known to exist. Our discovery of the virtually intact Kinker diatom collection after it had vanished for a century can be regarded as a cultural heritage conservation paradigm; the collection is scientifically significant and can be developed into a rich source of information for micropalaeontological, biostratigraphic and biodiversity studies. The conservation project now under way illustrates the importance of a synergy between materials and archives, because Kinker's extensive correspondence and notebooks have been preserved and are essential to the conservation, documentation and future exploitation of these valuable materials. Although Kinker cannot be regarded as a productive scientist, his importance as an 'information node' is now evident

Molecular phylogeny and morphology of the marine diatom Talaroneis posidoniae gen. et sp. nov. (Bacillariophyta) advocate the return of the Plagiogrammaceae to the pennate diatoms

A new genus, Talaroneis Kooistra & De Stefano, gen. nov. and a new species T. posidoniae Kooistra & De Stefano, sp. nov. are described. The elongate cells, which were found on a leaf of Posidonia oceanica, formed star-, zigzag- or ribbon-shaped colonies in culture. The distinctive character of T. posidoniae was the presence of two silica wings flanking a furrow near each apical pore field. Uniseriate, transverse striae were arranged perpendicular to the apical axis; those on one side of the valve offset with respect to those on the other side. Valve poroids were occluded by perforated rotae. These morphological characteristics placed the taxon unambiguously within the supposedly centric family Plagiogrammaceae. The taxon would be excluded from the morphologically similar araphid family Rhaphoneidaceae because it lacked apical labiate processes and a clearly defined sternum. Nonetheless, a phylogeny inferred from nuclear-encoded SSU ribosomal DNA sequences of a range of diatoms unambiguously recovered T. posidoniae within the araphid pennates, close to Rhaphoneis cf. belgica (Rhaphoneidaceae). Apparently, labiate processes were lost secondarily in T. posidoniae and possibly in the common ancestor of all Plagiogrammaceae. Valve ultrastructural features of T. posidoniae would allow placement of the new species in Dimeregrammopsis but this genus was invalidly described. We transferred the single species of this genus to T. furcigerum (Grunow) Sterrenburg, comb. nov. and designated it as the type species of Talaroneis

A new blue-pigmented hasleoid diatom, <i>Haslea provincialis</i>, from the Mediterranean Sea

International audienc

Pieter Hendrik Nienhuis: aquatic ecologist and environmental scientist

Prof. Dr. Pieter Hendrik (Piet) Nienhuis worked for almost 40 years in all aspects of aquatic ecology and environmental science and retired on 31 October 2003. He can be characterised as a distinguished scientist, shaped in an applied estuarine and aquatic research ambience of the former Delta Institute for Hydrobiological Research (DIHO) in Yerseke in the Netherlands. His appointment as a full professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen offered him a challenging step from monodisciplinarity in ecology, via multidisciplinarity in the application of ecological knowledge in river science to interdisciplinarity in environmental science and management. This paper describes his education, teaching activities, research, scientific publications, science management, and significance for various scientific disciplines. He made important contributions to biosystematics of angiosperms and algae, the ecology of seagrasses, nutrient cycling and eutrophication in estuarine ecosystems, and the integrated modelling of the ecological functioning of estuaries. Subsequently, he paid much attention to environmental problems in river basins, ecological rehabilitation and sustainable development. His work influenced the view of ecologists, aquatic scientists and water managers in the Netherlands as well as abroad, in particular regarding the drawbacks of compartmentalization of the estuaries and the importance of connectivity and morphodynamics in river systems. In hindsight, it appears as a logical line that he gradually moved from estuarine ecological research that became increasingly driven by societal and environmental problems to the field of environmental science and management. [KEYWORDS: coastal zone management ; estuarine ecology ; environmental sciences ; interdisciplinary research ; river basin management ; river ecology]