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Yesterday I got an e-mail from the Production Editor of Taxon with my contribution to the forthcoming book on the plant family Compositae (Asteraceae). It was a terrible reading! I was invited to give a talk on its nearest relatives on the 2006 years Compositae Conference in Barcelona, and this was thought to form the basis for a book chapter that was supposed to be submitted shortly after the conference. Unfortunately other things came in between and I never started writing on the chapter, and as time passed I thought (with some relief!) that it was too late for my contribution – when one day Vicki Funk sent me an e-mail telling me that I still had some time for finishing my contribution! With much too little time and many other obligations, I made a not very inspired attempt to write, something that shine through in the text I noticed today. I had a terrific chance to write an initiated and inspiring text about a fascinating part of the Angiosperm Tree of Life, with many interesting and curious members, but instead I only produced a worse-than-average, boring and quite uninteresting contribution… I clearly must write more and more often, to improve my scientific writing. Perhaps starting here at my web-page?
Ha! I survived Mongolia! And the French cavers! No, just kidding, they were great company during the trip, all four weeks… So what happened? Well, the next few weeks I will try to decipher my travel diary, translate it to English, and publish it here for whoever is interested in the answer of that question… hmmm, I also need to select and edit a few of my 5000 photos I brought back… So please come back soon if you want to read my about my Mongolian (not-so-much-)caving trip!!!
With less than three weeks left before departure for Mongolia (this was on Monday, now it is just a little more than two weeks left), everything should have been settled but then we accidentaly are noticed that there is a Mongolian Cave Research Association (thanks Sebastian for noticing us on Dr Avirmed and his Association!) that we must contact and clear our plans with (it goes without saying that this is the right thing to do, but it is also in accordance with the UIS Code of Ethics). This is only positive, now we might have the chance to meet Mongolian cavers! If we only had known about them earlier…
But then Xavier tells me that their flight from France arrive to Beijing several hours after the flight to Ulaanbaator departs! I don’t know if they have solved it yet; I hope they can manage to get to Ulaanbaatar the same day as I! And I must check my own flight…
I myself is still waiting to get my passport back, hopefully with approved visa… OK, I sent it to the Mongolian General Consulate a little late, so I can’t expect it until today or early next week, and I can’t blame anyone else, but now we need a copy of the passport and the visa for a permission to visit a part of Mongolia close to the Chinese border.
And I also need to find a good portable memory device, like jobo or hypderdrive… more money to give out, but once bought I don’t have to buy again. I hope…
The preparations for the Mongolian expedition are closing up! I have spent way more money than I planned, but I think most of it are well spent money – I even plan to earn back some of the money spent on my new business!
I started with something I have thought about for a long time, a new camera set:
Nikon D300, with two zooms (16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR, and 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED VR), battery pack, remote controller, tripod (Velbon Sherpa 630 with a ball head), flash (Speedlight SB-800), UV-filters, polarization filter, and lastly a backup pocket camera (Olympus Mju 1030SW). To this must be added battery chargers, rechargable batteries en masse, solar panel… With the new camera the need for a new computer with larger screen (22″) and a pen tablet (Wacom Intuos3 A4-size) should perhaps not have surprised me, but I didn’t expect it that soon. I do get some angst over buying so much high-tech stuff…
…and I must admit it is much more fun to buy the out door equipment!
My old rucksack, a 110L The North Face Chamelion (everything but their new Chameleon!) that has served me well the last 18 or so years, is too heavy to bring to Mongolia, so I bought a lighter (but less sturdy) Bergans Rondane 85L with a flight bag. I also had to buy a pair of boots (Meindl Island PRO MFS) and (recommended by Manuela) some Smartwool socks. I also bought a sleeping bag, a Western Mountaineering Apache SMF, my first down filled (850+) bag. The rucksack and the sleeping bag was bought at Säck, the boots at Kängspecialisten, and the socks and some other minor stuff like the sunglasses (Julbo Race) and the BUFF (Visor buff Evo 2 Uphill) from Addnature (and no, I’m not sponsored – if you want to sponsor me, please just send me an e-mail and I’m sure we can work something out! :p)
(With a nodd to Manuela, who gave me the idea for this list on her blogg.)
I don’t know what happened, but suddenly just a couple of hours ago I got a terrible resfeber (I don’t know the proper English translation, my small dictionary says “jitter before a journey” but I’m not sure it encapsulate the correct feeling…) for my Mongolian journey in just one month! And for once everything feels just positive! It will be great to go! …the resfeber might have been released by a flora (Endemic Plants of the Altai Mountain Country) I found today among the new books here at the museum, a flora over the endemic flowering plants of the Altai Mountains (that is, among other, the western Mongolia)! That’s where I will go, soon!!!
Yesterday I finally finished determining the Geigeria vouchers for the DNA samples sequenced for my new research project! Geigeria of family Compositae is a small genus of some 20+ species, mostly in the deserts of southern Africa. In the next nine months or so, I will try to investigate the evolution of its pappus (modified calyx, aiding in the dispersal, and present on all members of Compositae, in one form or another), and perhaps also other structures like life form, presence/absence of spines, winged stems, etc. I also want to take a deeper look into the biogeography of the genus; its member are desert living and might tell something about the evolution of the deserts in that part of Africa over the last 5 million years or so. To my help I have sequences from six DNA markers from some 20 specimens. Today I aligned the sequences, and right now I’m running a phylogenetic analysis that will finish tomorrow. Then I will know if I need to sequence more representatives from the genus… The best would be if I have to go to Angola and Namibia and collect more material, but I don’t think there will be time for that…
En av de globala skandalerna just nu är (avsaknaden av) internetaccess i Afrika söder om Sahara, rapporterat i senaste numret av Science (6 juni 2008, s. 1261). Till Västafrika går en (1) fiberoptisk kabel, Östafrika får förlita sig på satellitlänk. Vad det gör för möjligheten för de få botanister verksamma i Afrika att koppla upp sig mot tillgänglithetsprojekt som Aluka eller JSTOR är inte svårt att se, inte heller hur denna begränsning i internettillgång sätter stopp för effektiv utvecking såväl vetenskapligt som ekonomiskt (dessa hänger ju dessutom tätt ihop). Trots detta är det viktigt att projekt som är riktade mot att tillgängliggöra information åt Afrika får fortsätta och uppmuntras. Om inte annat så visar det hur mycket information och kunskap vi har hämtat (några skulle säga stulit) från Afrika och som det är något av vår skyldighet att dela med oss, och när väl Afrika och dess universitet blir uppkopplad mot resten av världen kommer de att ha en rik källa att ösa ur och behöver inte bli ytterligare fördröjda.
Jag sitter och försöker koncentrera mig på att läsa ett manuskript som jag har fått för review… Funderar nästan på att ta med den ut i skuggan under en ek men då kommer jag bara att somna… Annars hade det varit perfekt idag, att sitta under en ek, dricka kall saft och reviewa manuskript. Obetalt jobb som måste göras, reviewa. Som man dessutom inte vet hur viktigt och betydelsefullt det egentligen är. Men förhoppningsvis så höjer det ändå kvaliteten på det som sedan publiceras. Eller så stoppar det bara nya oprövade vilda idéer och gör att det som skrivs alltid följer samma mall. Inget ont i det, i sig själv, en viss återhållsamhet är ibland bra, men reviewprocessen kan döda kreativitet. Samtidigt som man, förhoppningsvis, slipper stå där efteråt och skämmas över att man har publicerat dålig forskning, ogenomtänkta tankar eller missat andras forskning… Så därför fortsätter vi läsa varandras manuskript åt tidskrifterna, på arbetstid som borde ägnas åt annat eller obetald fritid.
I felt very honoured when, in March 2006, I was asked by Alfonso Susanna if I could present an overview of the phylogeny of Asterales for The International Compositae Alliance TICA meeting in Barcelona later the same year. Of course my first — and probably wisest — reaction was to say Thank you very much I’m flattered, but no thanks, I can’t this time, and try to come up with some in all likelihood quite transparent excuse (like my new job at the museum…). But in the end I throw away all my concerns and decided to at least make a try (after all, I was asked after Kåre Bremer and Michael Donoghue who both had to decline). Or, try and try… it is not very much a try when you are up there in front of many of the world leading botanists and senior experts on many of these very plants I was going to present. It’s akin to present a person to her childhood friend. And not only doing it good, but also making people learning new things about their old friend. I think I failed miserably, but I tried, and I enjoyed it. And kind of completely forgot (or ignored perhaps) the second part, writing all up into a short chapter for congress volume, that was due a few months later… I did the only possible thing to do: I blamed the working situation, as I naturally had all my focus on the API scanning project, but in reality it was a writer’s cramp coupled with a feeling bordering to certainty that I didn’t had anything new or interesting to write, and that I really didn’t know anything about the plants (other than how they related to each other).
No, not really. I did an early attempt to write an interesting piece. Inspired by Richard Dawkins‘ The Ancestor’s Tale, I started with Asteraceae and tried to, almost literally, travel backwards in time, meeting the different clades, branches, at the nodes where they connected to the Asterales (part of the) Tree of Life. But I tried in vain, being way too stuck in the Dawksonian way of writing. I was not good enough (and nobody should be surprised about that). And I quit and tried to forgot. Or ignore.
But funnily enough, when I was sure I was “safe”, and started to blame myself for missing this great opportunity to ponder on my favourite subject, a subject off which I know so much (or so I now could think), an e-mail from Vicki Funck reached my mail-box at the museum, desperately trying to get some kind of response from me (only an hour later, Bertil Nordenstam came and told me that Vicki tried really hard to get into touch with me). Now I really couldn’t hide more, and I responded at once. She gave me a few weeks (a month or two) to finish my contribution, and this was exactly the stress level I needed to get started! Somehow, I managed to write a chapter (that unintentionally ended up somewhat Dawksonian!) that’s perhaps not the best thing I ever will publish (I’m sorry ’bout that, but my writing skills in English are not good enough yet!), but is a personal meditation upon what I, right now, think is the most likely relationships and evolutionary scenarios on the Asterales branch of the Tree of Life. And not only that, but thanks to the Association Endemia Faune et Flore de Nouvelle Calédonie (Endemia), Flickr, the International Carnivorous Plant Society’s forum, and Google Images search – and most importantly, the generosity of several photographers around the globe, I even (in the very last seconds) could submit a beautiful two page colour plate with photos of representatives of all the families of Asterales!
Now I’m only eager to see the chapter (and colour plate!) in print! As soon as I have a pdf (which I hope I will receive), I will forward it to all the persons who contributed with photographs to the colour plate. I will also try to make my contribution available through my homepage in one format or another.
In conclusion, I only want to say many thanks to Vicki for pushing me to write the chapter, to Alfonso for asking me to present my view of the phylogeny of Asterales, and to the photographers who helped me complete my chapter! In the end, it was great fun writing, and very inspiring! A lot of new ideas took shape during the process… hopefully I will be able to follow up on one or two of them…
Jag borde nog ha ångest. För ett par veckor sedan brände jag alldeles för mycket pengar, och jag är inte färdig än. Allt för att uppfylla en gammal dröm, och passa på innan resan till Mongoliet. Jag har blivit med ny kamera. En Nikon D300 som jag borde klara mig på ett bra tag (i alla fall tills D400:an kommer!). Till det ny optik. Egentligen vill jag ha fasta gluggar, men för resor är ett par zoomar mer lätthanterligt. Tyvärr hade jag inte råd med de bästa, så på önskelistan står nu ljusstarkare zoomar högt. Men det blev ett par ganska schyssta ändå, två Nikkor-zoomar: dels DX-formatzoomen 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR, dels småbildsformatzoomen 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED VR. Inga dåliga zoomar alls, men f/2.8-zoomar hade ju varit snäppet mer användbara… Sedan förr har jag också en Tamron 1:1-makro 90 mm f/2.8 som fungerar alldeles utmärkt; borde bara lämnas in på ordentlig rengöring snart. Något jag borde ha köpt för länge sedan är UV-filter, men nu blev det i alla fall av! Tre Hoya Super HMC UV(0) har således införskaffats och sitter nu på var sin glugg, och där ska de sitta! Dessutom har jag beställt ett polarisationsfilter och funderar på ett eller ett par tonade gråfilter… Batterigrepp och fjärrutlösare följde med liksom av bara farten, men har redan kommit till användning! Skoj! Dessutom en kraftfull blixt, en Speedlight SB-800. Så kanske jag äntligen kan börjar ta grottbilder också?! (För säkerhets skull köpte jag en liten Olympus Mju 1030SW som alltid kommer att ligga i overallens bröstficka; vattentät till 10 m djup och tål att tappas från 2 m borde räcka för de flesta grott-turerna.) Fast… helt plötsligt börjar jag bli sugen på en Firefly 3 och ännu en (slav)blixt… Kolfiberstativ och magnesiumlegeringkulled beställt men jag väntar fortfarande. Fastnade för Velbon El Carmagne 630 (1,5 kg; om jag har förstått det rätt så har Velbon bytt namn på El Carmagne-serien till Sherpa) med PH-273 (0,45 kg), under två kg tillsammans borde gå att släpa med sig ut. Nu håller jag bara tummarna att de verkligen kommer…! Till detta kommer förstås en uppsättning uppladdningsbara batterier, resebatteriladdare (inklusive solcellspanel), extraminne, backuphårddisk och rengöringskit… Det blir en dyr resa till Mongoliet…!
(Kameran och gluggarna är för övrigt registrerade och stöldmärkta…)
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