I was born in Newcastle, New South Wales Australia. I became interested in bryophytes during my third year Botany studies at the University of Sydney, Australia, with lectures from Tony Martin. I was intrigued at their dominant haploid generation, enabling, as I thought, a fairly direct influence of their environment on their growth. My fourth (Honours) year, under the supervision of Geoff Berrie, was devoted to establishing specimens of wild-collected Riccia fluitans (as we thought) in axenic culture on both nutrient solution and nutrient agar. This was successful, and allowed experimentation on the effects of changing the nutrient environment of the thallus. This project laid the foundation for a PhD project under Geoff Berrie’s supervision, during the same years as Helen Ramsay was studying moss karyotypes with him, and Obchant Thaithong (then Obchant Na-thalang) was studying Australian Riccia spp. taxonomy and distribution under Roger Carolin’s supervision in the same department.
In due course I found that the plant I had started with was not R. fluitans but R. canaliculata, but nevertheless there were many interesting observations to be made on the effects of varying culture conditions on this and other species I established in culture. My interest in the interactions of plants with their environment has remained as a particular interest, both in the laboratory and in the field.
Post PhD, while enjoying time at home with small children, I continued the part-time plant biology teaching I’d started as a student, first at University of Sydney, later at Macquarie University. In 1979 I started as a full-time senior tutor in Biology at Macquarie University teaching a third-year subject Plant Diversity and Evolution. Over the years I tutored and lectured in many biology subjects until I retired as a Senior Lecturer in 2002.
In 1979 I also stepped back into research work (alongside the teaching I loved) when an opportunity arose for a summer’s fieldwork on subantarctic Macquarie Island, working together with bryophyte taxonomist Rod Seppelt. Here was an environment very different from my home location in temperate Sydney, with a vegetation rich in bryophytes in a wildly beautiful location! I didn’t resist!
Between 1979 and 2005 I was fortunate in having opportunities to conduct fieldwork with ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions) on subantarctic Macquarie and Heard Islands and at Casey Station in Antarctica, with New Zealand Antarctic Programme (now Antarctica New Zealand) at Scott Base and in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and with the French IPEV (Institut Polaire Emile Victoire) on subantarctic Îles Kerguelen. These are all places with harsh environments where bryophytes are important components of the vegetation. They are also all beautiful places, regarded as very special by those who have worked there.
In such environments field work is of necessity a communal activity, and I’ve shared voyages, helicopter flights, field huts, tents and research projects with many colleagues, students, and students-who-became-colleagues. Different scientists working together (and publishing together, see below) brought different areas of expertise together—a bonus all round! My interest in the interactions of plants (particularly bryophytes) with their environment involved me in projects including vegetation history (including fossil moss leaves from a former lakebed), moss species distributions in a local area, island-wide vegetation mapping, investigating bryophytes and cushion plants on subantarctic terraced landforms, molecular genetics studies of Antarctic mosses including identifying dispersal patterns, and colonisation of historic buildings by bryophytes and vascular plants.
These fascinating and beautiful places in which I’ve been privileged to work inspired my interest beyond the plants, in the environments themselves, including the influence of humans upon them. Subantarctic Macquarie and Heard Islands and the French Austral Lands and Sea are now recognised as World Heritage Areas. In the words of the Antarctic Treaty’s 1991 Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection, Antarctica is designated as “a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science”. With colleagues I’ve contributed to documenting some of the human-mediated deleterious changes to these environments and their biota. I applaud the work of the many who are working diligently to remediate deleterious human impacts of the past and to minimise future human impacts, helping to conserve these rare, important, fascinating, beautiful Antarctic and subantarctic environments and their biota. Those lovely bryophytes are important components of their biota, and there’s scope for lots more fascinating peaceful science!
*AC = Companion of the Order of Australia AAM = Australian Antarctic Medal
Some relevant publications, with co-workers:
Selkirk, P.M. 1979. Effect of nutritional conditions on sexual reproduction in Riccia. The Bryologist, 82(1):37?46.
Selkirk, P.M. 1980. Effect of an exogenous auxin and cytokinin on Riccia. The Bryologist, 83(1):67?71.
Selkirk, P.M. and Selkirk, D.R. 1982. Late Quaternary mosses from Macquarie Island. Journal of the Hattori Botanical Laboratory, 52:167?169.
Selkirk, P.M. and Seppelt, R.D. 1987. Species distribution within a moss bed in Greater Antarctica. Symposia Biologica Hungarica 35:279?284.
Downing, A.J., Seppelt, R.D. and Selkirk, P.M. 1988. Analysis of bryophyte distribution patterns on subantarctic Macquarie Island. Colloque sur Les Ecosystèmes Terrestres Subantarctiques, 1986, Paimpont, C.N.F.R.A. 58:177?182.
Adamson, D.A., Whetton, P. and Selkirk, P.M. 1988. Warming on Macquarie Island: temperature changes reflecting Southern Hemisphere circulation and the Southern Oscillation. Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 122:107?112.
Selkirk, P.M., Seppelt, R.D. and Selkirk, D.R. 1990. Subantarctic Macquarie Island: Environment and Biology. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 285pp.
Selkirk, P.M. 1992. Climate change and the subantarctic. in Quilty, P.G. (ed) Impact of Climate Change, Australia-Antarctica. Canberra: AGPS, pp43-51.
Adam, K.D., Selkirk, P.M., Connett, M.B. and Walsh, S.M. 1997. Genetic variation in populations of the moss Bryum argenteum in East Antarctica. in Battaglia, B., Valencia, J. and Walton, D.W.H. (eds) Antarctic Communities: Species, Structure and Survival. Cambridge University Press pp 33-38.
Selkirk, P.M., and Adamson, D.A. 1998. Structural vegetation and drainage of Macquarie Island, map, 1:25 000. Published by Australian Antarctic Division, Hobart. (edition 2, 2001).
Selkirk, P.M., Skotnicki, M.L., Ninham, J.A., Connett, M.B., and Armstrong, J. 1998. Genetic variation and dispersal of Bryum argenteum and Hennediella heimii populations in the Garwood Valley, Southern Victoria Land. Antarctic Science 10:423-430.
Bergstrom, D.M. and Selkirk, P.M. 1999. Bryophyte propagule banks in feldmarks on subantarctic Macquarie Island. Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research 31:202-208.
Skotnicki, M.L., Selkirk, P.M., Broady, P., Adam, K.D. and Ninham, J.A. 2001. Dispersal of the moss Campylopus pyriformis on geothermal ground near the summits of Mt Erebus and Mt Melbourne, Ross Sea region, Antarctica. Antarctic Science 13: 280-285.
Whinam, J., Selkirk, P.M., Downing, A.J. and Hull, B. 2004. Return of the megaherbs: plantcolonisation of derelict ANARE Station buildings on subantarctic Heard Island. Polar Record 40:235-243.
Briggs, C.L., Selkirk, P.M. and Bergstrom, D.M. 2006. Facing the furious fifties: the contractile stem of the subantarctic megaherb Pleurophyllum hookeri (Asteraceae). New Zealand Journal of Botany 44:187-197.
Downing, A.J., Brown, E., Oldfield, R.J., Selkirk, P.M., Coveny, R. 2007. Bryophytes and their distribution in the Blue Mountains Region, New South Wales. Cunninghamia 10(2): 225-254.
Frenot, Y., Chown, S., Whinam, J.P., Selkirk, P.M., Convey, P., Skotnicki, M.L. and Bergstrom, D.M. 2005. Biological invasions in the Antarctic: extent, impacts and implications. Biological Reviews 80: 45-72.
Skotnicki, M.L. and Selkirk, P.M. 2006. Plant biodiversity in an extreme environment: genetic studies of origins, diversity and evolution in the Antarctic. in Bergstrom, D.M., Convey, P. and Huiskes, A.H.L. (eds) Trends in Antarctic Terrestrial and Limnetic Ecosystems. Kluwer. Pp161-175.
Bergstrom, D.M. and Selkirk, P.M. 2007. Human impacts on sub-Antarctic terrestrial environments. Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania 141(1): 159-167.