Photo of fern spores by AltSU biologist Aleksey Vaganov was included into the calendar of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Every year the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences invites scientific and educational institutions of Siberia to participate in illustrating the calendar of the SB RAS. A photograph of the fern spore Ceratopteris thalictroides (L.) Brongn, which was among the best, was sent from the Institute of Biology and Biotechnology of Altai State University. It should be noted that among all selected 12 winning organizations in the calendar, Altai State University is the only university, all others are institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The author of the shot is the leading researcher of the South Siberian Botanical Garden, Candidate of Biological Sciences, an associate professor of the Department of Botany of AltSU Aleksey Vaganov.

– As part of my dissertation, when studying fern spores, I use a special scanning electron microscope. With it, you can take pictures of spores with a size of about 30 micrometers. I consider the picture that was selected for the calendar of the Russian Academy of Sciences the most unusual, the rest of the spores of the fern family, that I study, look much simpler. The photo shows a specimen of a coastal aquatic fern, the spore material of which I brought from the collection of the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing). It is cosmopolitan, inhabits all continents in the tropical and subtropical zones, but mainly near the sea coast. It has a semi-aquatic form - hydrophyte, that is, its fronds are in the air, and the base and rhizome are in the water soil, said the scientist of Altai State University.

The scientist's collection contains about 500 samples of fern spores for scanning electron microscopy. During the study, he takes from 30 to 150 pictures of each sample. These images are necessary for comparative morphological analysis regarding the issues of evolution and taxonomy of representatives of the Pteridaceae family.