Synchrotron X-rays for Metals in Plants, Soils, and Environmental Systems: Early Science and Community Building at XLEAP

Session

Metals and nutrient cycling in aquatic systems

Aug 5, 2026, 2:30 PM

Bradfield 101 (Cornell University)

13. Cell Wall Architecture and Dynamics in the Streptophyte Alga, Penium margaritaceum

Josephine LoRicco (Muhlenberg College)

8/5/26, 2:30 PM

Nutrient cycling in aquatic organisms

Oral presentation

Salt stress is one of the major and most common challenges that confront plants, and also would have been a major stressor during the colonization of land by Streptophyte algae ~500 million years ago. Penium margaritaceum is one of the closest known algal relatives to land plants, and its cell wall closely resembles the primary cell wall of higher plants. The inner layer of the cell wall is...

12. Selenium exposure differentially influences methylmercury retention in mayflies

Jacqueline Gerson (Cornell University)

8/5/26, 3:00 PM

Nutrient cycling in aquatic organisms

Oral presentation

High concentrations of mercury and selenium are individually toxic to organisms. However, it is proposed that high levels of environmental Se can reduce Hg bioaccumulation and biomagnification in aquatic food webs, though this potential interaction has been under-studied in aquatic macroinvertebrates. We examined the proposed effect of selenium on methylmercury accumulation, along with the...

19. Imaging Elements in Fish “Hard Parts” To Make Discoveries About Their Secret Lives

Karin Limburg (SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry)

8/5/26, 3:30 PM

Nutrient cycling in aquatic organisms

Oral presentation

Fish bodies contain numerous sclerochronological structures that have been used for routine age determination (from annual increment deposition) and increasingly, to study elemental and isotopic composition for life history interpretation. The most widely used structures are otoliths (literally, ear-stones), made of aragonite (CaCO3) precipitated on a protein framework, that are part of the...