Reporter Kang Yan Correspondent Ding Qizhao Chen Qingbo
A group of young post-90s postdoctoral and doctoral teams rooted in Weishan Lake, accompanied by microorganisms, the team engaged in the study of ciliate species diversity in the wetlands of Weishan Lake, which was not only listed in the core scientific journals of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but also discovered more than 40 new species for the first time in the world, filling the research gaps in freshwater wetland habitats at home and abroad.
Return home after completing your studies
"Bubble" in Weishan Lake for more than three years
On May 10, on a small building in the hinterland of Weishanhu National Wetland Park, Wang Zhe, a postdoc who hurried to the hospital, carried a hard shell bag on his shoulder with bottles and cans filled with various liquids. What he is quite eye-catching is a row of "red packets" on his arm, "or the mosquitoes of Weishan Lake are powerful, and the bites are stable, accurate and fierce." Wang Zhe shook his arm and quipped.
Wang Zhe, who returned from collecting water samples from Weishan Lake wetland, is a postdoctoral fellow of the Weishan Lake Ecological Environment and Fishery Resources Scientific Research Station of the Shandong Provincial Rural Revitalization Expert Service Base and the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the leadership of Academician Song Weibo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Wu Tong, Song Wenya and other 4 other post-90s doctors have been "soaking" in Weishan Lake for more than three years.
At the beginning of 2019, the research team organized by the Ocean University of China, where he was studying, came here successively. Wang Zhe is a native of Jining and is particularly kind to this place, and the local government provides great convenience for their scientific research activities, so the team's scientific research projects are relatively smooth. Wang Zhe and his team carried out research on the biodiversity of Weishan Lake, especially the species diversity of ciliates in the Weishan Lake wetland.
Wang Zhe introduced that Weishan Lake is full of blue waves and rich in products; Weishan is also a red hot land, and the people are brilliant. The sound of earth pipa in childhood movies and television, Wang Zhe has a special feeling for Weishan Lake.
"Weishan is a good place, where the ecological environment is excellent, the species are rich, there are natural conditions that the southern water body does not have, and the preserved original biological species provide irreplaceable innate conditions for biodiversity research." Wang Zhe said that the scientific research here is relatively harmonious in terms of communication, and the local government gives strong support.
Sample staining
Technical work that is easy to be despised
Every scientific research achievement must pay a lot of time and effort, take the sample of lake water, collect each specimen, observe the morphological changes of ciliates under the electron microscope, we must use a thin hair-like microspipette to hold the microbial specimens that are difficult to see with the naked eye, and place them on the embryo dish to observe. "Being able to use this small device flexibly at will requires dozens or even hundreds of professional training sessions." Wang Zhe picked up the small straw in his hand and said.
Stain the sample with specialized reagents to form a specimen with clear lines. Speaking of this technology, Wang Zhe downplayed it, in fact, this is the most technical work of extracting samples in the whole research process. Because of slight discrepancies in the reagent ratio, the sample may be ill-wired or damaged. After that, it is also necessary to conduct data collection, combing the genetic ordering of organisms, and conducting species identification.
In the face of urgent scientific research desires, Wang Zhe is accustomed to the "three points and one line" life by the lake, laboratory and bedroom on weekdays, and he feels that it has nothing to do with time and space. Sometimes, after a series of experimental procedures, I stay in the laboratory for six or seven hours at a time. In the winter, when sampling in the lake, the temperature of the hands is often lower than the temperature of the lake, and it is common to take samples at the lake in the summer and come back full of "red packets".
"None of this is a big deal, our research fits perfectly with the beautiful Weishan Lake, and I think researchers around the world will envy our team." Wang Zhe said.
The results have been fruitful
More than 200 species have been collected
Weishan Lake, the largest freshwater lake in northern China, is rich in biological species in the basin. Especially in recent years, in order to ensure the stability of the water quality of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project and protect the ecological environment of the South Four Lakes, Weishan County has carried out the cleaning of cages and net enclosures and the retirement of fish ponds, accumulatively clearing and retiring 180,000 mu of breeding ponds, and promoting the transformation and upgrading of fisheries. At the same time, there is a serious lack of microbiological research on protozoa as the core in freshwater wetlands at home and abroad, and it is urgent to carry out research on the diversity and community structure, ecological environment and spatio-temporal evolution pattern, and basic biology of the native organisms of Weishan Lake wetland.
At the right time, Wang Zhe's scientific research team had the honor of participating in this aspect of scientific research activities. They often go deep into the area around the Great Lake, and have successively established more than 10 biological sampling points in Weishan Lake Fishing Seed Farm, Weishan Lake Wetland Park, Shunhang Park, Cross River Inlet and other places.
"The ciliates we studied are the simplest animals and the most specialized and complex group of protozoa. Although they are small, they are important participants in the micro-food network of water bodies. It plays a key role in the material cycle, energy flow and ecological balance of the water ecological environment, and is of great significance to the protection of the water ecological environment. Wang Zhe introduced that the research on ciliates in freshwater wetlands on the mainland is extremely scarce, and the work based on modern research methods is basically blank. For this reason, in the past three years, the Weishan Lake Wetland Biodiversity Academician Workstation has systematically carried out a diversity survey covering three aspects of ciliate species, genes and ecology in the Weishan Lake wetland.
Wang Zhe's scientific research team has collected more than 200 species, including nearly 40 species with the world's first discovery, 86 new molecular species, and 90 new record species in China, and initially obtained the family information on the diversity of ciliates in weishan lake wetland, formed a classification atlas and retrieval table, and provided reference materials for the assessment of species diversity in weishan lake wetland.
The team also derived the home information of ciliate species-gene-habitat diversity in Weishan Lake wetland, filled the research gap in freshwater wetland habitats at home and abroad, further constructed professional-level data on the diversity of ciliate species in freshwater wetlands, simultaneously improved the construction of dna genetic information database of the involved taxa, made new breakthroughs in the field of ciliate cytology, and further explored the interrelationship between wetland ciliates and environmental ecology, which will play a positive role in the prevention and control of biological diseases and the extension of ecological chains in the future.
Their workstation relies on the Ocean University of China and Shandong University (Weihai) to introduce two postdoctoral fellows this year, two master's students to doctoral students, and two doctoral students to be selected for CSC funding for overseas exchanges. Wang Zhe has published 16 SCI papers in this field, has collected nearly 60 ciliate species, obtained more than 100 sequences, and presided over one postdoctoral project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Shandong Province and Qingdao City.
"Now that we have such a superior scientific research environment and conditions, we will redouble our efforts, hoping to publish a "List of Ciliate Species in Weishan Lake" in three to five years, and use scientific research results to give back to the people here and the hot land for the achievement of dreams." Wang Zhe said.