RUI: A Survey of the Moss Dwelling Tardigrades of China

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RUI: A SURVEY OF THE MOSS DWELLING TARDIGRADES OF CHINAWilliam R. Miller, Clark Beasley, and Marshall CrosbyTardigrades or water bears are small moss dwelling animals that exhibitcryptobiosis, the remarkable ability to withstand extreme heat, cold,pressure and other severe environmental conditions. Generally less than 1 mmin length, the slow moving tardigrade resembles a cute miniature bear orcaterpillar. They are found on every continent in the moisture trapped bymoss, lichen, soil, or marine sediments. Their cryptobiotic life stage hasbeen defined as the reversible suspension of metabolism and may last fordecades. While desiccated in cryptobiosis, tardigrades have beenexperimentally subjected to temperatures between -272 C and +150 C, to 6000atmospheres of pressure, to complete vacuum, to high radiation, to commongases, and still they returned to an active life stage. These resultskindle both physiological and evolutionary speculation, including thepossible ability of the animal to be transported through space. Yet, theecological requirements and life cycles of tardigrades remain little known.They are suspected of being carried around the world by the winds, but theirglobal distributional patterns are very incomplete. For example, only 47out of 950+ described species of tardigrades have been reported as occurringin China. By comparison over 500 species are known to occur upwind inEurope. Although water bears are often abundant, their contribution to thelife web of the planet is still a mystery. This project will developundergraduate research teams at Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, PA, andMcMurry University, Abilene, TX. The teams will conduct a survey of thetardigrades of China, and over four years, more than 20 student researcherswill collect, identify and publish in the project. First, the teams willextract tardigrades from the 10,000 moss samples collected by the MissouriBotanical Garden in their NSF-funded "Moss Flora of China" project. Second,the teams will conduct an expedition to China in collaboration with a memberof the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and collect 2000 additional samples.Finally, the teams will work at the Academy of Natural Sciences inPhiladelphia to build and document a voucher collection.The teams will contribute to the understanding of global diversity by addingpossibly as many as 300 species of tardigrades to our knowledge of theChinese fauna. Our students will probably discover and describe many newand endemic species. We will expand the understanding of the ecologicalrequirements of the animals and test several hypotheses relative to local,regional, and global distributional and spatial patterns. The data will beadded to the new Tardigrade Reference Center web site for tardigradeeducation and research. The ultimate product will be a data based, digital,and printable catalogue to the Tardigrades of China, complete withdescriptions, images, identification keys, geo-referencing, andbibliography. Such a reference resource will aid taxonomists, ecologists,biogeographers, teachers, and students all over the world who will be ableto use tardigrades in assessment studies, education, experiments, anddiscovery.