Eileen J. Cox: her journey with diatoms

Eileen already had a keen interest in science during her school years. She studied Botany at Bristol University from 1967–1970, and it was her University teacher, Professor Frank Round, who inspired her interest in diatoms. During her PhD at Bristol under Frank Round’s supervision (1970–1975) she investigated the biology of tube-dwelling diatoms. At the same time, she worked as Departmental Demonstrator in the Botany Department. She left Bristol University in 1976 and became a Claridge Druce Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (1977–1980). Her investigations focused on the genus Navicula and the ultrastructure of diatom cells more generally. From 1979–1980 Eileen took up a post as lecturer at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. In 1980 Eileen moved to Germany and worked as a Royal Society European Exchange Research Fellow at the Litoralstation, Biologische Anstalt Helgoland. Here her studies focused on living diatoms, in particular the genus Donkinia, and she explored the value of live-cell features as diagnostic characters. From 1982–1985 she worked as a Max Planck research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute at Plön, and from 1985–1988 as a Fellow of the German Research Foundation at the Max-Planck-Institute of Limnology, River Station, in Schlitz. During these years Eileen’s research on Navicula continued, but she also worked on the genera Placoneis, Parlibellus and Pinnularia, and studied relationships between diatom distributions and the environment. In 1989 Eileen returned to the UK to join the University of Sheffield, first as Research Associate, then as NERC Advanced Research Fellow and Honorary Lecturer, and carried out ecotoxicological studies on zooplankton. In 1992 she joined the Natural History Museum as Research Botanist to continue her research on diatoms. Here Eileen made many important contributions to diatom taxonomy and systematics. She carried out important studies on the naviculoid diatoms, and on live diatoms including her novel research on valve morphogenesis. Eileen has been involved in the organisation of many scientific meetings. In 1987 she organized the first meeting of the German-speaking diatomists in Schlitz, Germany, a meeting that has subsequently developed to include a much larger group of scientists from across Europe and from 2020 onwards will be the European Diatom Meeting. Other meetings she has helped organize include those held by the British Phycological Society, British Diatom Meetings, a NorthWest and Midlands Freshwater Group meeting, the Van Heurck Symposium on Taxonomy, a SETAC Europe meeting, a Society for the History of Natural History Meeting, and several European and International Phycological Congresses. Eileen has taught extensively; hosted 7 post-doctoral fellows and many research visitors to the Natural History Museum; supervised 10 PhD students, 4 M.Sc./M.Phil. students, 1 M.Res. student, and 4 final year B.Sc. students; and examined 9 PhDs and 1 DSc. She is currently a member of six learned societies, has refereed manuscripts for 31 scientific journals, has been invited speaker at 32 scientific meetings, gave 28 invited lectures at universities and research institutes, and presented at 56 national and international conferences. Eileen has given great service to several scientific societies, as council member, secretary or president. These include the British Phycological Society (president 2001–2002), the International Society for Diatom Research (president 2000– 112 Pl. Ecol. Evol. 152 (2), 2019 2002), the Systematics Association, and the International Phycological Society. Since 2007 Eileen has been Head of Postgraduate Studies in the Science Directorate of the Natural History Museum. As part of her role she develops and implements the training programmes of students at NHM, is responsible for strategic planning, and coordinates with research and training partners at universities and research institutions across the UK. Eileen is currently Editor in Chief of Diatom Research, and was previously Associate Editor (2011–2014), she is a board member of Fottea (since 2010), was guest co-editor of the Journal of the North American Benthological Society (Special Issue on Ecology of Springs), guest co-editor of the Journal of Limnology (Special Issue on Spring Biodiversity and Conservation), and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Phycology (2004–2009). Private hobbies include gardening, crafts such as cross stitching and sewing, visiting art museums and travelling, especially river and ocean cruises that have taken Eileen and Elliot recently to Alaska, the Caribbean, Germany, the Czech Republic, France and Portugal. Readers may like to read Eileen’s own description of her journey in diatoms, written for the young diatomists’ blog (available at https://youngisdr.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_12. html or in this volume supplementary information).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An autoecological investigation of Desmodesmus: implications for ecology and taxonomy

Background and aims – Phenotypic plasticity is the morphological response of a single genotype to produce several different physiological and/or morphological types under changing environmental conditions. Desmodesmus, a green alga, has been well documented for its phenotypic responses (e.g. colony transformation to unicells, and spiny transformation to spineless). Two oxbow lakes (R1 and R2) and one artificial dam reservoir (R3) were used to evaluate the quantity and diversity range of Desmodesmus species occurring during four seasons of one-year. Methods – Water samples were quantified for Desmodesmus species and identified using the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). To better understand the morphological responses of Desmodesmus, an axenic culture of Desmodesmus abundans, CCAP 258/299, was cultured in sterile-filtered water from each water body collected from each season. Key results – Not surprisingly, different Desmodesmus species inhabited each water body and exhibited different densities of growth, contributing 77% of the total density in R1, 22% in R2 and only 1% in R3. Summer and autumn were the seasons when Desmodesmus showed the highest density in the shallow and polymictic oxbow lakes (R1 and R2). In the deep and dimictic reservoir (R3), the highest density of Desmodesmus was during autumn. Phenotypic plasticity was observed in the experiments, with unicells being formed from colonies, some with shorter spines. Desmodesmus grown in a high concentration of nitrogen (SE, Medium 7 +3N and BBM) had a higher percentage of unicells compared to the other culture conditions. Conclusions – Our studies are important from both taxonomical and ecological points of view, since our results showed that there may be new possibilities for using the phenotypic plasticity of Desmodesmus to assess water quality and as a potential bioindicator of nutrient availability in natural ecosystems