The community of botanists of Russia is going to meet soon in Irkutsk, East Siberia, at the bank of beautiful Baykal lake and at the foothills of East Sayan mountains for a regular conference «Problems of studying and preserving the plant world of Eurasia» (http://conf.sifibr.irk.ru/eng.html). The conference is dedicated to a bryologist, a specialist in floristics and biogeography of East Siberia Bardunov Leonid Vladimirovich. A genus of green moss named Bardunovia is related to this researcher.

Probably too beautiful place for a scientific conference.. as it would be difficult to concentrate on work:) Anyhow, there are 7 sections including one dedicated to Cryptogamic biota, e.g. mosses, fungi and algae.

My presentation will be about fruiting dynamics and community structure of macromycetes of the oligotrophic bog. I will relate the study of vegetation (plant communities) and fungal communities and discuss the differences and general methods used to describe community structure and composition when studying macrofungi. And show our results of community structure and dynamics revealed during four (actually 3,5) years of plot-observations. This time period allowed to reveal some unvariable characteristics of composition and quantitative structure, but also the seasonal and inter annual dynamics of number of species, total productivity and abundance.

The presentation with the text is available in pdf (in Russian).

Another reason to visit Irkutsk is to become acquainted with my 3-week Tardigrade-looking niece. My sister was studying water bears there and her baby looks like them, what a coincidence! 🙂