Category Archives: Uncategorized
What a great opportunity!
Spencer gulf – a UCYN-A hotpspot?
Lauren Messer has a new paper on the way out describing the microbial goings on in the Spencer Gulf. As part of the Australia’s Microbiome Project with the Seymour Lab at UTS, we sampled from the Spencer Gulf region in South Australia. This place has very interesting geophyscial properties. Its described as an “inverse estuary” where salinity is lower at the mouth than the origin, and the temperate waters can oligotrophic. Somewhat unusually for this latitude, nitrogen fixation is believed to play an important role in the productivity of this system, possibly based upon the unusually high abundance of UCYN-A Candidatus Atelocyanobacterium thalassa we observed here.
Participation in the first research cruise on the RV Investigator
Greatly looking forward to getting on the brand new RV Investigator for its maiden science voyage in early November. Unfortunately we have had 2 cruises cancelled over the last year due to the lateness of delivery, but now get our opportunity. We will sample the tail of the East Australia Current at its current most southerly extent off the continental shelf of Tasmania, starting at the Maria Island National Reference Station. Ill be leading the microbial ecology part of the voyage along with Martin Ostrowski from Macquarie University. The new ship allows for much greater interdisciplinary activity in marine science. Our voyage leader is Prof Iain Suthers from here at UNSW, and we have chemists and physicists and climatoligists aboard. The voyage is titled :
Physical and biological oceanography of the shelf break off Maria Island; An exploration for frontal eddies
Rv Investigator, picture from CSIRO
A new paper from Tiffanie Nelson!
Glad to report another paper coming out by Tiffanie Nelson in PLoS ONE. It describes a large scale comparison of gut microbes from mammals living in terrestrial and marine systems and is aptly titled
The gut bacterial community of mammals from marine and terrestrial habitats
Tiffanie M Nelson, Tracey L Rogers, Mark V Brown
There are some intersting differences betweens mammals inhabiting the different biomes and Tiff speculates as the the causes. Link when it becomes available
New Manuscripts Accepted
We are pleased to announce some new manuscripts have been accepted over the last few weeks and I think its nice that they cover a wide variety of themes that we work on
Kohli GS (Gurjeets work from his PhD), Neilan BA, Brown MV, Hoppenrath M, Murray SA
DeMaere MZ, Williams TJ, Allen MA, Brown MV, Gibson JE, Rich J, Lauro F, Dyall-Smith M, Davenport KW, Woyke T, Kyrpides NC, Tringe SG, Cavicchioli R
Jimmy H.W. Saw, Michael Schatz, Mark V. Brown, Dennis D. Kunkel, Jamie S. Foster, Harry Shick, Stephanie Christensen, Shaobin Hou, Xuehua Wan, Stuart P. Donachie
Trialling the SaFa
We are currently in Cee, a small town on the Costa da Morte in the SW of Spain with Matt Smith from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee trialling the SaFa (in situ Sample Archiving Instrument)

The Safa is small boat deployable autonomous in situ sample and archiving instrument designed my Dr Matt Smith at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Whilst currently essential, ship-based sampling methods are both expensive and logistically challenging, particularly when observations are to be performed during dangerous or inconvenient conditions. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and in situ sensor instrumentation represent the future of aquatic sciences as they offer enhanced broad-scale observations while reducing personnel and transportation costs. The Sample Filtration and Archival (SaFA) instrument, developed in Dr Smith’s lab, is an open-source, programmable instrument that collects and filters 24 water samples and preserves them for subsequent molecular biological analysis in the laboratory.
Our recent paper in Ecology Letters is now
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Our recent paper in Ecology Letters is now available online
Indigo UpdateFor all updates to the Indigo V
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Mel’s new paper online now!
Mels new paper “Core sediment bacteria drive community response to anthropogenic contamination over multiple environmental gradients” is now online