Why I quit Mendeley

Mendeley log

I have used most of the major reference management platforms at one time or another: EndNote, RefMan, Zotero, and Mendeley. Most of my time in grad school, I used what my advisor used to make collaborating easier: EndNote at UCF and RefMan at Arizona. During my Ph.D. I played around with Zotero but found it clunky. Back in those days, Zotero only worked with Firefox, and it didn’t sync files, so I had to have a separate way of organizing my PDFs.

I was an early adopter of Mendeley, and I loved it from the start. It integrated citation management with PDF organization, synced across platforms, and had an interface that was about as intuitive as you could ask for. Importing PDF metadata didn’t always work, but that was fine with me. It was also free, for a limited (but pretty generous) amount of storage. It became such a vital part of my workflow that, when I had filled up the free storage, I was happy to pay for more. I’ve been paying Mendeley $54.99/year since 2011.

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A series of fortunate events

Salomé and Merchant 2019 Fig. 1

Figure 1 from Salomé and Merchant 2019. Taxonomic Basis of Chlamydomonas and Volvox. Ehrenberg’s drawings of Chlamydomonas and Volvox cells, published in 1838. Cells that belong to the same species are indicated by Roman numerals in the right panel. I, Gonium pectorale; II, Gonium punctatum; III, Gonium tranquillum; IV, Gonium hyalinum; V, Gonium glaucum; VI, Eudorina elegans; VII, Syncrypta volvox; VIII, Sphaerosira volvox; IX, Synura uvella; X, Chlamidomonas pulvisculus; XI, Uroglena volvox. The species was identified as Chlamidomonas pulvisculus but renamed Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in 1888.

In a new(-ish) article in The Plant Cell, Patrice Salomé and Sabeeha Merchant review the history and utility of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a model organism. The article discusses the advantages of Chlamy as a model organism, the scientific questions it has been used to explore, the history of Chlamy research, the characteristics of the species, the existing resources and databases, and genetic and genomic techniques. It’s a good introduction to Chlamy research in a more easily-digestible form than the massive, three-volume Chlamydomonas Sourcebook.

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Volvox rousseletii in Japan

A few years back, I invited Dr. Hisayoshi Nozaki to visit the University of Montana, and to my surprise, he came. In fact, five Japanese researchers came to Missoula for the better part of a week: Dr. Nozaki, Dr. Noriko Ueki, Dr. Osami Misumi, and two undergraduate researchers. We found a species, Volvox capensis, which had previously only ever been found in South Africa, in Ninepipe Reservoir (about an hour north of Missoula).

Now Ryosuke Kimbara and colleagues have reported another apparent long-distance traveller. In a new paper in PLoS One, they report finding Volvox rousseletii, previously reported only in Africa, in Lake Sagami in Japan. Volvox rousseletii is a member of the group of species known as Volvox section Volvox (also sometimes referred to as Euvolvox), which includes the largest species (in terms of cell number) and evolved independently of the other species in the genus Volvox.

Kimbara Fig. 1

Figure 1 from Kimbara et al. 2019. Light microscopic features of asexual spheroids in culture of Volvox rousseletii strain v-sgm-17 from Lake Sagami, Japan. (A) Mature spheroid showing daughter spheroids (d). (B-D) Part of spheroids. (B) Top view of individual sheaths (asterisks) of somatic cells stained with methylene blue. (C) Top view of somatic cells with thick cytoplasmic bridges (b). (D) Side view of elongate-ellipsoidal, anterior somatic cell with stigma (s) and pyrenoid (p) in the chloroplast. (E) Developing embryo just after inversion, showing gonidia (g) of the next generation.

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