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Ostracode Research Activities inAUSTRALIA
Correspondent: Stephen Eager <Stephen.Eagar@vuw.ac.nz>
DeDeckker, Patrick. I have been still quite active with trace element work on non-marine ostracods. One paper has just come out in the Palaeo-3 special issue resulting from the Chatham ostracods meeting. Another was published with Guy Wansard [Chemical Geology], and a 3rd one with Lyn Ingram and Allan Chivas and other colleagues on material from San Francisco Bay [Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta]. I am preparing a new paper on trace elements on ostracods from the hypersaline Lake Frome from South Australia for presentation at the Spring meeting of AGU. Finally, preparation for the AGU special session on ostracod and foram shell chemistry in Boston is taking a bit of my time. Hopefully, a book to be edited by Johnathan Holmes will be the bi-product of this meeting. Allan Chivas is completing the stable-isotope analysis of the large ostracod Australocypris [some 1500 individuals] which Patrick cultured in different types of waters some..... years ago. Again, results will be presented at the AGU meeting.
Jones, Peter. Peter completed accounts on Devonian and Carboniferous ostracods for a book to be published on the Palaeobiogeography of Australasian Faunas and Floras. He is jointly working (at a distance) with Pamela Diaz Saravia (Tucuman, Argentina) on some Carboniferous (Namurian) ostracods from Patagonia, and with Michel Coen (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) on a comparison of ostracod species from the Early Carboniferous (Tournaisian) of Belgium and northwestern Australia. As the proposed Revised edition of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Paleozoic Ostracoda (TIPPO) will not be published, the Eridostraca MS that Peter submitted to the TIPPO project will be published elsewhere.
Neil, John. I am continuing to work on Tertiary southeast Australian faunas and related problems and undertake a faunal analysis of a Recent Bass Strait assemblage from Erith Island, in particular the relationships between intraspecific variation, microreticulation and aggradation/degradation effects.
Parker, Andrew. I am describing about 60 new species (including 3 new genera) of Cypridinidae (Myodocopida) from baited traps off eastern Australia. Here I am compiling a DELTA (Descriptive Language for Taxonomy) database to make natural language descriptions and produce a computer-generated key to the family Cypridinidae. I currently have two large grants, ABRS and ARC, which fund this work and my work on animal structural colours and evolution respectively. I am writing a book on my work on the cause of the Cambrian explosion, as summarised in New Scientist (21 November 1998, No. 2161, pages 42-46). I am preparing to leave the Australian Museum (in August 1999) to take up a Lecturer position at Reading University, UK, although this involves mainly research. I attended three conferences in 1998: Crustacean Society Conference (Amsterdam - presented paper), Optical Design in Nature (Bath, UK – plenary speaker) and Pacific Ocean Research (Hawaii - plenary speaker). I also worked in Zurich and England, which included a visit to David Siveter. I am continuing with my descriptions of the East Australian Cypridinidae. I am working on segmentation in Myodocopida with Akira Tsukagoshi and Jean Vannier. I am describing a new mechanoreceptor (velocity detector) in Lowrya (Cypridinidae), which is acted upon by the viscous drag of the surrounding fluid. This probably functions to detect vibrations in the substrate; either steady fluid drainage motion or acoustic motion in the surrounding liquid. I will be visiting Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef (Queensland) to examine bioluminescent cypridinids.
Warne, Mark. Mark has taken up an appointment as a lecturer in Earth Sciences within the School of Ecology and Environment at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. He continues his research work on the Cretaceous and Tertiary Ostracoda of Australia.
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CYPRIS No. 17 (1999): home page, table of contents, ostracode research by country list