2015 David Cushing Prize

The prize honors the memory of David Cushing, Founding Editor of Journal of Plankton Research. It is awarded annually for the best paper by an early career stage scientist published in the journal during the previous year. The prize helps foster the interesting and high-quality papers by young scientists that David Cushing so actively supported. The 2015 David Cushing Prize has been awarded to Bingzhang Chen for his paper, “Patterns of thermal limits of phytoplankton” (J. Plankton Res. 37, 285–292) Bingzhang Chen obtained his PhD with a major in Marine Environmental Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Dr Hongbin Liu in 2008. He also worked with Dr Zoe Finkel and Dr Andrew Irwin in Mount Allison University, Canada, from 2009 to 2010. During this time, he started to learn the R language and entered the field of data analysis and programming. This experience has been proved very useful for his later work.

2015 David Cushing Prize

The prize honors the memory of David Cushing, Founding Editor of Journal of Plankton Research. It is awarded annually for the best paper by an early career stage scientist published in the journal during the previous year. The prize helps foster the interesting and high-quality papers by young scientists that David Cushing so actively supported. The 2015 David Cushing Prize has been awarded to Bingzhang Chen for his paper, “Patterns of thermal limits of phytoplankton” (J. Plankton Res. 37, 285–292) Bingzhang Chen obtained his PhD with a major in Marine Environmental Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Dr Hongbin Liu in 2008. He also worked with Dr Zoe Finkel and Dr Andrew Irwin in Mount Allison University, Canada, from 2009 to 2010. During this time, he started to learn the R language and entered the field of data analysis and programming. This experience has been proved very useful for his later work.

Prudent female allocation by modular hermaphrodites: female investment is promoted by the opportunity to outcross in cyclostome bryozoans

Many sessile, suspension-feeding marine invertebrates mate by spermcasting: aquatic sperm are spawned and gathered by conspecific individuals to fertilize eggs that are generally retained during development. In two phylogenetically distant examples, a cheilostome bryozoan and an aplousobranch ascidian, the receipt of allosperm has previously been shown to alter sex allocation by triggering female investment in eggs and brooding. Here we report experiments demonstrating that two species of cyclostome bryozoan also show restrained female investment in the absence of mating opportunity. In Tubulipora plumosa, the production of female zooids and progeny is much reduced in reproductive isolation. In Filicrisia geniculata, development of distinctive female zooids (gonozooids) begins but halts in the absence of mating opportunity, and no completed gonozooids or progeny result. Reduced female investment in the absence of a mate thus occurs in at least two orders of Bryozoa, but significant differences in detail exist and the evolutionary history within the phylum of the mechanism(s) by which female investment is initiated might be complex. The broadening taxonomic spectrum of examples where female investment appears restrained until allosperm becomes available may signify a general adaptive strategy among outcrossing modular animals, analogous to similarly adaptive sex allocation typical of many flowering plants.

Prudent female allocation by modular hermaphrodites: female investment is promoted by the opportunity to outcross in cyclostome bryozoans

Many sessile, suspension-feeding marine invertebrates mate by spermcasting: aquatic sperm are spawned and gathered by conspecific individuals to fertilize eggs that are generally retained during development. In two phylogenetically distant examples, a cheilostome bryozoan and an aplousobranch ascidian, the receipt of allosperm has previously been shown to alter sex allocation by triggering female investment in eggs and brooding. Here we report experiments demonstrating that two species of cyclostome bryozoan also show restrained female investment in the absence of mating opportunity. In Tubulipora plumosa, the production of female zooids and progeny is much reduced in reproductive isolation. In Filicrisia geniculata, development of distinctive female zooids (gonozooids) begins but halts in the absence of mating opportunity, and no completed gonozooids or progeny result. Reduced female investment in the absence of a mate thus occurs in at least two orders of Bryozoa, but significant differences in detail exist and the evolutionary history within the phylum of the mechanism(s) by which female investment is initiated might be complex. The broadening taxonomic spectrum of examples where female investment appears restrained until allosperm becomes available may signify a general adaptive strategy among outcrossing modular animals, analogous to similarly adaptive sex allocation typical of many flowering plants.