Author Archives: katrine

Workshop: Polychaete diversity in the Norwegian Sea

Our lab is currently brimming with polychaetologists (those working with the polychaeta, the bristle worms), as we’re in the middle of this year’s PolyNor workshop (Polychaete diversity in the Norwegian Sea).

The making of plans

Working hard

The Polychaete pack gathered

The colourful family Phyllodocidae is one of the groups we are working on

We have eleven participants (five nationalities) here, and all are working hard to assign names to animals, fill up our lists of material to be cataloged into the University Museum’s collections, accumulation data for their own research projects, and selecting material suitable for barcoding through the NORBOL-project.

Odontosyllis sp

A Paranaitis wahlbergi

A member of the family Sabellidae

The majority of the samples that we are working on have been collected through the MAREANO-programme, but we are supplementing with material collected around Bergen, closer to the coast and into the fjords, and material collected around Svalbard.

Collecting in the Oslofjord

The past week we’ve been staying at “Biologen”, a research station in the city Drøbak. The station is run by the University of Oslo, and we’ve been making day trips with the research vessel Bjørn Føyn collecting marine invertebrates using a variety of gear. During three days we managed to sample 19 localities, some of which were “type localities” of specific species that we were after. A type locality is the site where the specimen that the species description is based on was collected. Whenever possible, we want to include genetic barcoding of a specimen collected at the type locality. We also collected “a bit of everything” for barcoding, as we don’t have a lot of material that is suitable for genetic work from this region.

: “Biologen” (“the biologist”) where we were staying

: A Henricia spp on its way to becoming a barcode voucher

: Lovely conditions for field work!

: Happy researcher with a sponge

: Mountains of sediment, as per usual

: Checking the samples

: R/V Bjørn Føyn

: Washing samples

: The field station

: A pretty Sabellidae worm being prepared for barcoding

: One very happy researcher (he just found the isopod species he had come to look for)

: Sea urchins en masse

: Planning next days sampling

: We’re not letting the early dusk stop us

The 7th Congress of The European Malacological Societies

During the second week of September (7-11.09.14) the 7th Congress of The European Malacological Societies were held at St. Catherine’s College of the University of Cambridge, UK.

St. Catherine’s

The Colleges of Cambridge is a mashup of old venerable buildings and modern facilities, St. Catherine’s, founded in 1473, is no exception consisting of a brand new conference center and the main bulk of the college consisting of a quilt of buildings being pieced together since its founding, up to the 1900’s. The participants numbering around 150 researchers, converged on Cambridge from all around Europe, but also included travelers from more distant places like Vladivostok, Hong Kong and South Africa.

Talks in the Auditorium

As the Congress was not the largest, all the presentations were held in the same Auditorium and each day had its own topic, everybody got to experience all the talks, opposed to running around to find the most interesting symposium, leading to the participants to sit and learn about interesting topics and studies they most likely would have missed out on. The small number of researchers also led to a more intimate atmosphere and many discussions with people from widely different malacological fields and academic levels.

The University Museum was represented by two posters, presented by Trond Oskars and Lena Ohnheiser. Trond presented the remaining part of his master thesis, with a poster on the molecular phylogeny of the non-monophyletic Philiinidae cephalaspid gastropods and Lena presented a poster on the status of the cephalaspids Cylichna alba as a species or a complex of species.

Workshop on African invertebrates

We’re currently busy with a workshop on Marine Invertebrates of West Africa , look here for news on that:

MIWA-blog

Our field station at Espegrend, where we’re based

The Museum’s scientific cruise of 2014

R/V Håkon Mosby in Lysefjorden. photo: K.Kongshavn

R/V Håkon Mosby in Lysefjorden. photos: K.Kongshavn

We’ve spent the past couple of days out on the big ole’ blue, sampling along the south-western coast of Norway for bristle worms, worm molluscs, bubble snails and fish on board the research vessel “Håkon Mosby”.

We went from Bergen down to Lysefjorden in Rogaland, and had a highly productive trip. In total we sampled 30 stations using various kinds of gear (epibenthic sled, grab, net, trawl and triangular dredge) to capture our target animals.

This is a region that we have very little material from, and what we do have has been sampled in a way that makes it unsuitable for genetic work – so we went out to remedy that. Now the work begins with sorting and identifying the animals – but we already know that we have found some of the species that we were hunting for – so the cruise was definitely a success, and the scenery and weather made for a wonderful bonus!

Grab

Netting for fish in the littoral zone

Collecting in the littoral zone

Lab work onboard

No cruise without mud! This pile yielded three of the tiny snails one of our researchers was after; success!

Sorting in the lab

Trawl catch

RP-sledge in the sunset

Emptying the triangular dredge

Friday Photo: A beautiful feather duster worm!

For todays photo we have a real beauty; this bristle worm (Polychaeta) from the family Sabellidae, the feather duster worms!

After being emailed this photo, one of our collaborators – who works with the Sabellidae – has identified it to the genus Euchone (Thanks, M.! ).

For an identification to species level, an examination of small details, such as the characteristics of individual bristles would be needed. Or we can barcode it and hope that a specimen from the same species has already been (correctly!) identified to species and uploaded to the database, in which case we would get a hit on “our” barcode. In this case, we hope to do both – get a name on it based on the morphology, and do genetic sequencing so that its genetic barcode can be included in the BOLD database Euchone sp. Photo: K. Kongshavn

It was collected just outside of Bergen on one of our day trips, and will be included in our ongoing effort to assemble a library of genetic barcodes for all the Norwegian marine invertebrates.

Collecting around the island Sotra

We went out collecting with R/V “Hans Brattstrøm” again last Thursday, below is a small sample of the various animals that we collected. These will be used for genetic barcoding through the NorBOL project.

: Galatheidae

: Aplysia punctata

: Asteria rubens

: Crossaster papposus (?)

: Ascidicella scabra

: Phyllodoce cf mycosa

: Platyhelminthes

: Polycera quadrilineata

: Nereis sp

: Lovely day at the office!

: Hyas coarctatus

: Pandalus montagui

: Brachyura

: Polycera quadrilineata

Friday Photo

A nice and yellow polychaete just in time for Easter!

Thelepus cincinnatus (Fabricius, 1780) collected when we were doing field work just outside Bergen. The specimen will be barcoded throough NorBOL.

Thelepus cincinnatus (Fabricius, 1780) collected when we were doing field work just outside Bergen in March. The specimen will be barcoded through NorBOL.

Friday Photo: Eumida alkyone

Eumida alkyone (det: A. Nygren from above photo). Photo: K.Kongshavn

We went on two one-day trips with the R/V “Hans Brattstrøm” in March, here’s a collection of snapshots from the sunny day of surveying.

This is one of the species we found, and – apart from being nice and photogenic – it is also interesting as it is a rather new species, described in 2010. You can read more about that here:

Nygren, Arne ; Pleijel, Fredrik. 2010. From one to ten in a single stroke – resolving the European Eumida sanguinea (Phyllodocidae, Annelida) species complex. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution [In Press, Corrected Proof] , available online athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2010.10.010. page(s): 8

10(!) new plates ready for BOLD

We’re currently in the final stages of preparing ten plates; 9 from Norwegian waters for the Norwegian Barcode of Life project (NorBOL), and one plate of Polychaetes from the Marine Biodiversity of Western Africa (MIWA) project for submission to the BOLD database.

The shipment will consist of the following taxa groups:

1…

2….

3….

…4 plates of polychaetes (bristle worms) from Norwegian waters. These have mainly been collected by the large projects MAREANO, BIOSKAG and PolySkag, and have been identified during workshops that we have arranged.

One plate of aplacophoran molluscs

One plate of ophiouroids (brittle stars), mainly from MAREANO and BIOSKAG

One plate of ophiuroids (brittle stars), mainly from MAREANO and BIOSKAG

One plate of Amphipoda, mostly collected by MAREANO, but also samples collected during a teaching cruise from UNIS at Svalbard

One complete plate of Cumaceans…

..and one plate with Cumacea (bottom right), Mysida (bottom left) and Isopoda (top)

As well as one plate of African polychaetes.

Hopefully the sequencing will be successfull, and yield many new DNA barcodes!

The Invertebrate Collections

The University Museum of Bergen