p. 10) and in a session entitled “New Insights and Long term Records from Lacustrine Sys- President's Message tems” at IAGLR 2015 (the 58th Annual Con- ference on Great Lakes Research) in Bur- It has been a good and eventful year for lington VT, and we hope to hear about rele- CAP – we welcome six new members (see vant papers delivered at the INQUA Con- listing on p. 12), four from Canadian Uni- gress in Japan from colleagues who will be versities and two from American universities in attendance. – some students, some faculty members – Our Website Editor, Alwynne Beaudoin, and with diverse interests including geology, will be co-leading a field trip entitled “East botany, paleolimnology, paleoclimatology of Edmonton: Late Quaternary landscapes, and archeology. In addition, the call for ap- paleoenvironments, and human history” at plicants for the CAP Student Award resulted Botany 2015 in Edmonton (July 25 – 29). I in a tight competition between five excellent will be there in charge of the AASP booth candidates with interesting research projects (with some CAP membership forms in hand) (see the announcement of the winner – and together with CAP member Kimberley Bell, an honourable mention- on p. 2). This all so if you are in the neighborhood, do stop augurs well for the future of palynology. by! Our IFPS Councillor, Simon Goring, is There was also strong visibility for paly- co-convening parallel sessions entitled nology and related fields at the Joint Assem- “Paleoecological Patterns, Ecological Pro- bly in Montreal, including a session entitled cesses, Modeled Scenarios: Crossing Scales “Global Change During the Holocene and to Understand an Uncertain Future?” at two Anthropocene: New Methods, Questions, meetings to be held in Baltimore this year: and Perspectives” convened by long-time the Ecological Society of America meeting CAP members Matt Peros and Konrad (August 9 – 14) and the Geological Society Gajewski (see the Notes from Montreal on of America (November 1 – 4). Six other pal- ynologically-relevant sessions will be held at the GSA meeting, including the dedicated topical session “T146. Palynology” (see invi- CAP EXECUTIVE 2013 tation on p. 9). I look forward to seeing many of you at the President: Francine McCarthy AGM to be held in Baltimore in early No- President elect: Vera Pospelova vember – details to be announced by email Secretary-Treasurer: Mary Vetter and on the website. Website Editor: Alwynne Beaudoin Francine McCarthy Newsletter Editor: Florin Pendea CAP President IFPS Councillor: Simon Goring ([email protected]), ISSN 1188-3596 2 Editor's Notes CAP STUDENT Thank you to all who contributed materi- al for this edition of the CAP Newsletter: A. Beaudoin, S. Goring, T. Lacourse, F. AWARD McCarthy, V. Pospelova, and M. Vetter. This year, the CAP Awards Subcom- mittee had a very difficult time choos- ing between five very high-quality ap- Deadline for Next plications for the Student Award – thank you to all the applicants, and CAP Newsletter good luck with the research! Please submit items for the next issue of the In the end the award went to Kimber- CAP Newsletter (Volume 38, Number 2, De- ley Bell, a PhD candidate in Geosci- cember 2015) by November 10, 2015. Con- ence at the University of Calgary spe- ference reports, announcements, field trip cializing in palynology and biostratig- reports, notices of new books, dissertation raphy. The title of her research pro- abstracts, book reviews, news, and essays on posal was Biostratigraphy of Creta- topics relevant to Canadian palynology are ceous and Paleogene strata in north- all welcome. Please send contributions to: ern Yukon Territory and District of Mackenzie, Northwest Territories. We Florin Pendea look forward to reading a brief sum- CAP Newsletter Editor mary of her research and the use to [email protected] which she put the prize money in the December Newsletter. The committee decided to award an Table of Contents “honourable mention” to Kristin Mi- chels, a PhD candidate - in Botany President’s Message.......….….……....1 with an emphasis in Paleoecology at CAP Executive .………………...….…1 the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Editor’s notes …………..……….........2 for her proposal entitled: Historical CAP student award……………….…..2 Vegetation Change in the Sylvania Updating CAP…………….……….….3 Wilderness: A High-Resolution Pollen Featured article…………………….….4 Record. Palynfo…………………………….….9 Upcoming CAP AGM……….……….9 Notes from Montreal...…..……….….10 Francine McCarthy Graduate opportunities...…….............11 Chair of Awards Selection Committee Recent publications……....………….12 Welcome new members……………..12 Membership form……………………13 CAP Newsletter *** Volume 38 Number 1 *** May 2015 3 ration in Nova Scotia, including the require- Updating the ment that our AGM be held in that province Canadian Association each year. Following research, consultation with other scientific organizations, and dis- of Palynologists! cussions among members of the Executive and other CAP members, we decided CAP The Canadian Association of Palynologists should apply for incorporation as a not-for- was proposed in 1974 and first met officially profit organization federally, through Corpo- on January 8, 1979. In January 1987, CAP rations Canada. That process was successful- was incorporated as a non-profit organiza- ly completed on 23 June 2015. With federal tion registered in Nova Scotia through the incorporation, our members can reside any- hard work of then Secretary-Treasurer Rob where in the world and we can hold our Fensome. The By-laws set up then and mod- AGM anywhere as well. ified in a few minor ways since have guided CAP through the years (see the CAP website The annual reporting requirements are simi- lar to those for incorporation in Nova Scotia. We will need to file an annual return, includ- ing our financial statement, each year as be- fore. Filing online will actually be a little cheaper than the Nova Scotia filing fee was. We will need to make some minor changes to our By-laws and submit those to Corpora- tions Canada before 23 June 2016. There- fore, we will need to consider and approve the new By-laws at CAP’s upcoming AGM at the 2015 Geological Society of America http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/oxygen- Annual Meeting in Baltimore, 1-4 Novem- icons.org/oxygen/256/Apps-system-software- update-icon.png Commercial use allowed. ber. The Executive will draft and circulate the proposed new By-laws in advance of the http://www.scirpus.ca/cap/hist.htm for a full AGM. Please plan to attend! accounting of CAP’s history). Mary Vetter In early 2013 we learned that CAP was not CAP Secretary-Treasurer meeting the conditions to continue incorpo- CAP Newsletter *** Volume 38 Number 1 *** May 2015 4 “Dinoflagellates are funky things” in the De- cember 2014 CAP Newsletter, Vol. 37 (2). The differences in the middle to late Holo- Featured article cene records of core SP09 from the mono- limnion and of core SP07, still in deep water (13.3 m) but within the chemocline (the zone Exploiting Taphonomy of rapid change in physico-chemical condi- tions of the water column in Sluice Pond, to improve Lake Level MA) was attributed to selective oxidation of susceptible dinocysts at the shallower site. Reconstruction Large, ornate cysts attributed to Peridinium gatunense Nygaard that comprise as much By Francine McCarthy as 78 % (mean 40.2, n=43) of the Holocene record in core SP09 (Fig. 1) are rare (up to Paleoenvironmental reconstruction as- 33%. Mean = 11.3%, n = 15) in the relative- sumes that fossil assemblages primarily re- ly sparse, less diverse dinocyst record in core flect the life assemblage, and that it was in SP07, illustrating the perils of basing inter- equilibrium with ambient conditions, but I pretations on analysis of a single core have long contended that the importance of (Drljepan et al., 2014). taphonomy is often (typically?) underesti- Together with my collaborators, I have mated. In most lakes the life assemblage is continued to tease out the ecological and pervasively skewed by factors like differen- taphonomic signatures of the dinocyst rec- tial preservation of the various components ords of Sluice Pond by comparing the paly- of the ecosystem and time-averaging of the nological assemblage in lakebed sediments record, in addition to transport into and out both above and below the chemocline. The of the lake (Kidwell and Flessa 1996). Mero- bathymetry of Sluice Pond provides an ideal mixis (permanent stratification leading to natural laboratory to assess the influence of anoxia in the unmixed bottom layer, or mon- oxidation (Fig. 2). Most of the lake area is olimnion) promotes excellent preservation less than 5 m in depth and contains well- and effectively eliminates bioturbation, al- oxygenated water (see CAP Newsletter Vol. lowing the best opportunity to isolate the 37 (2), p. 12), but there is a deep basin in the biological component of variance between southeast part of the lake that inhibits mixing samples from the taphonomic component of the water column, and the water above the (Bell et al. 1987; Behrensmeyer et al. 2000). lakebed is anoxic (see measurements of dis- I attributed the exceptional abundance solved oxygen/ DO through the water col- and diversity of dinoflagellate cysts in Holo- umn at Station 1 near the site of Core SP09 cene sediments from the deep basins of in Figure 1). small, deep lakes in large part to bottom wa- ter anoxia in an article entitled: CAP Newsletter *** Volume 38 Number 1 *** May 2015 5 Figure 1. Core SP09, near Station 1 where water quality was measured showing an anoxic monolimnion below 15 m in the water column, contains a diverse and abundant dinocyst record. The transition from a Peridinium wisconsinense- dominated assemblage to one rich in taxa like and Peridinium gatunense, P. willei, and P. volzii reflects eutrophication during the mid-Holocene drought (Drljepan et al., 2014).