Category Archives: Sea slugs of Southern Norway (SSoSN)

Hello Jorunna artsdatabankia; new sea slug for Norway and to the World!

In 2018 former master student Jenny Neuhaus started working under supervision of Manuel Malaquias and Cessa Rauch on the sea slug species Jorunna tomentosa.

Jenny presenting her work on Jorunna tomentosa on the world malacology conference in the USA

It was known already for some time that this sea slug occurs in a wide variety of colour patterns (morphotypes). With the increased discovery of cryptic species due to improved molecular techniques we wondered if we were dealing with a single species or several cryptic lineages.

For a long time the different colours and patterns were regarded as natural variation within the species, consisting of shades of grey-white, cream-yellow, pale orange and either plain of blotched with light brown or chocolate brown spots of various sizes, distributed either irregularly or in lines, or combination of both!

But it was this variety that tossed up the question eventually whether we are dealing with a single species after all.

The diversity within Jorunna tomentosa

The nudibranch genus Jorunna consisted of eleven recognized species occurring in European waters. At that time, Jorunna tomentosa (Cuvier, 1804) was the only known species of this genus to be found along the Norwegian coastline. Prior to the study, the northernmost record of J. tomentosa was listed from Vestvågøy, Lofoten, Nordland. Today we know that the species is found at least 550 km further North in the Magerøysundet, Troms og Finnmark.

Jorunna tomentosa has an oval-elongate body shape with different colours varying from grey-white to cream-yellow and pale orange. They can reach a size up to 55 mm and occur at depths from a few meters down to more than 400m. They feed on sponges of the species Halichondria panicea, Haliclona oculata and Haliclona cinerea. J. tomentosa can be found from Finnmark in northern Norway, southwards along the European Atlantic coastline, the British Isles, the French coast, Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean Sea up to Turkey, and the Azores and Canary Islands. Besides the species has even been recorded from South Africa.

Jenny Neuhaus in the lab of Prof. Marta Pola in Spain dissecting specimens for anatomical studies

Jenny compared specimens from different parts of the world, including Norway, Ireland, Spain, France, Portugal including the Azores and South Africa. She took tissue samples for genetic studies and dissected them for their anatomy.

For the genetic studies we selected three different gene markers called COI, 16S and H3 to check how these morphotypes compare with each other and evaluate the meaning of genetic distances.

From the genetic distance analyses, it became clear that we were dealing with a “cryptic species complex”, as a clade of three specimens showed substantial genetic difference compared to J. tomentosa but seemed morphologically indistinguishable from another at first glance.

As sea slug anatomy is a matter of complexity, especially since each animal possesses both male and female reproductive organs (hermaphrodite), the expertise of Prof. Marta Pola from the University of Madrid was essential to conduct detailed morpho-anatomical studies. We were able to detect structural differences in the rasping tongue (radula) and parts of the reproductive apparatus.

Meet Jorunna artsdatabankia!

Jenny sequenced the DNA of 78 specimens of which 60 where successful for using in the final phylogenetic analyses. Her results supported the presence of a new Jorunna species, and in addition a possible case of incipient speciation in J. tomentosa with two genetic lineages morphologically undistinguishable. The new Jorunna species was based on material collected from Norway (Kristiansund, Frøya & the North Sea).

Jorunna artsdatabankia

J. artsdatabankia has a plain white to yellow background colour accompanied by small brownish spots irregularly placed on the body surface. Its distributional range is so far restricted to Norway, being recorded from Skogsøya, Frøya (Trøndelag), Brattøya, Kristiansund (Møre og Romsdal), and a North Sea plateau (60.726944 0.505371) with a depth range from 27 to 350 meters, suggesting a sympatric occurrence with J. tomentosa.

Jorunna artsdatabankia in comparison to Jorunna tomentosa

The name attributed to this new species was chosen to recognize the work of the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre (Artsdatabanken) for their instrumental role promoting and supporting biodiversity research in Norway.

– Cessa Rauch, Jenny Neuhaus, Manuel Malaquias

 

Sea slugs of Norway Instagram: @seaslugsofnorway

Sea slugs of Norway Facebook: www.facebook.com/seaslugsofnorway

The paper can be found here:

The genus Jorunna (Nudibranchia: Discodorididae) in Europe: a new species and a possible case of incipient speciation. Jenny Neuhaus, Cessa Rauch, Torkild Bakken, Bernard Picton, Marta Pola, Manuel António E Malaquias (2021), Journal of Molluscan Studies, Volume 87, Issue 4, December 2021, eyab028, https://doi.org/10.1093/mollus/eyab028

Sea slug day 2020; Jorunna in the spotlight

Today we celebrate Sea Slug Day! ✨

The day coincides with the birthday of Terry Gosliner, who has discovered one-third of all known sea slug species (more than a 1000!). Here’s a link to how October 29th became #SeaSlugDay.

And what better way to celebrate it than introducing a new species to the world. Today it will all be about the Jorunna tomentosa species complex that our master student Jenny Neuhaus studied for the last two years.

Jorunna tomentosa, picture Cessa Rauch

Jorunna tomentosa is known to occur in a wide variety of colour patterns, which tossed up the question whether we are actually looking at a single species at all, or maybe dealing with cryptic lineages.

The colour diversity of Jorunna tomentosa, picture by Anders Schouw, Nils Aukan, Cessa Rauch, Manuel A. E. Malaquias

Jenny compared specimens from Norway, Ireland, Spain, Azores and South Africa, both genetically as well as anatomically. She used different gene markers like COI, 16S & H3 to check how these morphotypes compare with each other and evaluate the meaning of genetic distances. But she also did an elaborate morpho-anatomical study to look for differences between these colour patterns. Together with Dr. Marta Pola in Madrid, they dissected the different J. tomentosa specimens and looked at parts of the digestive (radula & labial cuticles) and the reproductive systems. These are all key to help unraveling putative different species and characterize them.

About Jorunna tomentosa

Jorunna tomentosa has an oval-elongate body shape with different colours varying from grey-white to cream-yellow and pale orange. They can reach a size up to 55 mm and occur at depths from a few meters down to more than 400m. they feed on sponges of the species Halichondria panicea, Haliclona oculata and Haliclona cinerea. J. tomentosa can be found from Finnmark in northern Norway, southwards along the European Atlantic coastline, the British Isles, the French coast, Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean Sea up to Turkey, and the Azores and Canary Islands,. Besides the species has even been recorded from South Africa.

Before Jenny studied J. tomentosa, the various colour morphs were regarded as part of the natural variation of the species. By combining molecular phylogenetics with morpho-anatomical characters Jenny investigated the taxonomic status of the different colour morphs of J. tomentosa.

Jorunna sp. nov.?

Jenny sequenced 78 specimens of which 60 where successful for using in the final phylogenetic analyses. Her results supported a new Jorunna species, and a possible case of incipient speciation in J. tomentosa with two genetic lineages morphologically undistinguishable.

From left to right Jorunna spec. nov. Jorunna tomentosa lineage A and down Jorunna tomentosa lineage B

The new Jorunna species was based on material collected from Norway (Kristiansund, Frøya & the North Sea). Jorunna spec. nov. has a distinct colour pattern of cream-yellow with dark small dots (plus, as important; major differences in the radula and reproductive system).

Jorunna spec. nov.

It has been our pleasure to have Jenny here as a student, and she has done excellent work. Last year she won best student poster award last year with her work on Jorunna tomentosa at the World Congress of Malacology in California, USA. Most recently, Jenny defended her thesis on October 26 and passed with an A for her great work – congratulations from all of us at the Museum!

-Cessa Rauch

Sea slugs of Norway Instagram: @seaslugsofnorway

Sea slugs of Norway Facebook: www.facebook.com/seaslugsofnorway

Sea slugs of Southern Norway; farewell but not goodbye!

A note from the Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative project (artsprosjekt) “Sea Slugs of Southern Norway” (project home page), which ran from 2018 to the end of April 2020.

Dear all,

The Sea slugs of Southern Norway project reached its terminus at the end of April, with sending the last reports of our collection and research efforts to Artsdatabanken (the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre).

What we have been able to build up these last two years is of immense importance for the scientific collections of the Natural History Museum of Bergen (University of Bergen)  and for (Norwegian) biodiversity research.

Sea slugs of Southern Norway managed to collect over 1000 lots covering 93 different sea slug species, of which 19 are new for Norway and a few new to science (we are working on it!).

Below are photos of the species that were collected at different sampling events.  The photos are made either by the researchers associated with the project, or by the amazing team of citizen scientists.

Look at these beauties!

This would absolutely not have been possible without the special effort of our knowledgeable citizen scientists, and we would like to use this opportunity to name a few that were extraordinarily productive during the last years and provided the project and the Museum with valuable samples; Nils Aukan, Roy Dahl, Viktor Grøtan, Heine Jensen, Tine Kinn Kvamme, Runa Lutnæs, Ole Christian Meldahl, Jenny Neuhaus, Bjørnar Nygård, Anders Schouw, Erling Svensen, Cecilie Sørensen, Mona Susanne Tetlie, Anne Mari with Ottesen, Mandal Dykkerklub, Hemne Dykkerklubb, Slettaa Dykkerklubb, SUB-Studentes Undervannsklubb Bergen, Larvik Dykkerklubb, Sandefjord Dykkerklubb, and all the others that made big and small contributions.

A big thank-you to all contributors!

Would you like to know more about the citizen scientists part of the project? Check out this paper (starts on page 23) by Cessa and Manuel: Sea Slugs of Southern Norway: an example of citizens contributing to science.

Mandal team

One of the core components of the projects success was our outreach effort on all kind of social media platforms. During these two years these platforms got much more traffic than we initially thought; apparently we have many Norwegian sea slug fans, within and outside of Norway!

Therefore we decided to continue with our outreach efforts to keep everyone engaged and up to date about these wonderful animals in our ocean backyard, but with some minor adjustments. Some of you might have already noticed a few changes during the last days on the Facebook page  and our Instagram account. From today onward, the social media pages will cover sea slugs of all of Norway, and is now named accordingly. We also welcome a new admin to the facebook group: Torkild Bakken of NTNU University Museum. Welcome Torkild, the more expertise the better, so we are very happy to have you onboard!

We encourage everyone in this community to continue to be active and share your findings and knowledge with other.

Let’s carry on enjoying the wonderful world of sea slugs of Norway!

 

-Cessa & Manuel

 

Field work in Biskopshavn

Happy International Day for Biological Diversity 2020!
On this day, we wanted to share a few glimpses of our most recent field work:

We were finally able to – with some precautions in place – resume our field activities again this Tuesday; we had a lovely day trip in the sun to Biskopshavn, a locality just a few minutes drive away from the lab.

Here we collected animals from the shallow sub-littoral (from just below the tide mark to ~3 m depth) for the new project on Copepoda (see more about that here), and for Invertebrate fauna of marine rocky shallow-water habitats (Hardbunnsfauna).

Below is a short video from the field & lab (including the inevitable Littorina on the lam!), and a few of our findings from the day.

This is a polychaete in the family Syllidae. If you look at the tail end on the top image, you can see that it is about to breed: these animals can do so with schizogamy, which is the production of stolons (enlarged in lower image) which are budded off and become pelagic, swimming away to breed. The stolons form complete new animals, but differ from the stock animal in a number of respects, such enlargement of the eyes, reduction of the gut, and different musculature. The stolons die after breeding.

One of the animal groups Hardbunnsfauna is focusing on is the Bryozoa, or moss animals. Pictured is a Bowebankia spp. Due to COVID we haven’t been able to host our international specialists here this spring. We are amassing a nice collection of animals, and do our best to identify them – we will  begin preparing plates for DNA barcoding soon, and then involve the taxonomists once we have the results.

-Katrine, Cessa & Jon

Sea slugs from Vestfold

Larvik & Sandefjord 22.10.2019 – 27.10.2019

From October 22 to October 27, Sea slugs of Southern Norway crossed the Hardangervidda mountain pass to pay a visit to Larvik Dykkeklubb (LDK) and Sandefjord Dykkeklubb (SDK). Vestfold, in particularly the Larvik area, was a thorn in the side for the sea slug project. With fieldwork and collection trips covering most of the Hordaland area (Bergen, Espegrend), Rogaland (Egersund), Mandal (Vest-Augder), Drøbak (Oslofjord area) a lot was left to be discovered still for Aust-Agder and Vestfold. Therefore, a visit to Vestfold was very high on our bucket list.

With Winter just around the corner, we decided to squeeze in a short fieldwork trip to Larvik just before the end of 2019. Me and Anders Schouw drived from Bergen to Larvik with our rented caddy to meet up with Tine Kinn Kvamme and members of the LDK. On Tuesday morning, after packing our mobile laboratory in the car, we drove off to Larvik. In the early evening we arrived at the LDK, there we were welcomed by Lene Borgersen from LDK, who facilitated access to the clubhouse for sorting sea slugs during our stay. That evening was also a club members evening, and I took that opportunity to give a presentation about sea slugs and the Sea slugs of Southern Norway project

It was a great evening talking about sea slugs with interested club members while eating pizza! The next day Tine, Anders and I met up with LDK member Mikkel Melsom, who joined to help on our hunting for sea slugs

Picture 2. Some sea slugs from Larvik; from left to right; Limacia clavigera, Edmundsella pedata, Diaphorodoris luteocincta, Tritonia hombergii, Tritonia lineata and Cadlina laevis. Photo credits Anders Schouw

Later that day we met up at the SDK clubhouse with Stein Johan Fongen, where I had the opportunity to once again talk about sea slugs this time to the SDK members. This was a very special evening because among the audience, besides SDK members, we also had students from Sandefjord videregående skole (Sandefjord High School)

Sea slug presentation for students of the Sandefjord videregående skole and Sandefjord Dykkeklubb members. Photo credits Tine Kinn Kvamme

In the following days several members of the SDK also joint us collecting sea slugs. Despite the fact that October is known for being not an ideal season to find sea slugs (most species are observed during Winter and (early) Spring) we still somehow ended up with hours of sorting work at the Larvik clubhouse

Cessa Rauch & Anders Schouw sorting sea slugs in the Larvik clubhouse. Photo credits Tine Kinn Kvamme

Overall, we collected 21 different species, all newly registered specimens for the project with regard to this part of the country. It would be great to see what the species abundance would be during a sea slug season like February or March!

Overview of the species collected at Larvik and the Sandefjord area

Besides sea slugs and enthusiastic club members, another highlight of the week was a visiting seal at SDK! On our last day of fieldwork, a young seal was very bold and decided to rest close to the clubhouse in the harbor. It let people come up really close, which was great for making cute seal pictures. Cherry on the cake, in my opinion!

Young seal in the harbor close to the Sandejord Dykkeklubb. Photo credits Anders Schouw

On Sunday the tree of us had to say goodbye, Tine would go back to her hometown Oslo and Anders and I would cross the snowy mountains again back to Bergen. It was a short but sweet visit and great opportunity to meet members of Larvik and Sandefjord dykkerklubbs. I therefore want to thank LDK and SDK for their interest, enthusiasm and help for the few days Anders, Tine and I were around. I surely hope we will meet again next year, and find many more sea slugs. And of course, thanks to Anders and Tine for helping again, hope we can share many more sea slug adventures together

Left to right; Tine Kinn Kvamme, Cessa Rauch and Anders Schouw in front of the Larvik Dykkeklubb were most of the ‘lab’ work was done. Photo credits Lene Borgersen

More sea slugs: 

Do you want to see more beautiful pictures of sea slugs of Norway? Check out the Sea slugs of Southern Norway Instagram account; and don’t forget to follow us. Become a member of the Sea Slugs of Southern Norway Facebook group, stay updated and join the discussion! Hunger for more sea slug adventures, check our latest blog posts.

Explore the world, read the invertebrate blogs!

– Cessa

World Congress of Malacology 2019: 10 – 17 August 2019

On August 10, four delegates from the University Museum of Bergen made their way to Monterey Bay California, USA.

Attending the World congress of Malacology 2019, from left to right; Jenny Neuhaus, Justine Siegwald, Manuel Malaquias & Cessa Rauch

This year the World Congress of Malacology took place at the Asilomar conference grounds in Pacific Grove, Monterey. Monterey Bay is well known among many marine biologists due to its world-famous aquarium and aquarium research institute (MBARE), many marine protected areas (7; including the Asilomar State Marine reserve, close to where the conference was held), Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, Steinbeck Center (although located in Salinas, close enough to make it count). The latter was named after the famous marine biologists John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts from the Monterey County; Among other works they contributed to marine biology with their famous books ‘The sea of Cortez’ and ‘Between Pacific Tides’. All in all, Monterey Bay seems like an exciting place to be for us marine biologists.

The World Congress of Malacology was organized and chaired by the famous Terry Gosliner (Terry described more than 1000 species of sea slugs!) a senior curator of the California Academy of Sciences. About 300 participants contributed to a very lively and busy scheduled week

Some of the participants of the World Congress of Malacology 2019

Registration for the conference started on Sunday the 11th of August, but Monday was the real kick off of the program with fabulous keynote speakers such as Geerat Vermeij, David Lindberg, Susan Kidwell, etc.. During the poster session Jenny Neuhaus and Cecilie Sørensen, two of our master students working in close collaboration with the Museum project Sea Slugs of Southern Norway have presented their preliminary results. Unfortunately, Cecilie could not join us due to time constraints, and the poster was presented by Cessa

Justine presenting her work on Scaphander

On Tuesday we had a crammed agenda with multiple speakers talking at the same time, divided over the different halls in a variety of sessions. It was a busy day of running around trying to catch those talks one were most interested in. Justine had her talk in the Systematics session about her PhD research on Scaphander titled; First global phylogeny of the deep-sea gastropod genus Scaphander reveals higher diversity, a possible need for generic revision and polyphyly across oceans. It received a lot of attention and numerous questions afterwards, it was great to see how her research was perceived with so much curiosity and enthusiasm.

Wednesday we had a day off filled with several excursions. Jenny went to the whale watching trip, Justine went to spot marine mammals and Cessa to a trip along the coast to meet and greet the Californian red giants. The trips were all well organized and a very nice break off the week as the many presentations and sessions made the days long and intense. The whale watching trip took place in Monterey Bay and Jenny was lucky enough to observe the mighty blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, plenty of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), and several sunfish (Mola mola) swimming at the surface. It was an incredible experience for her to be able to watch the animals thrive in the great Pacific Ocean.

Whale-watching with Jenny Neuhaus in Monetery Bay

Cessa walking in between the Californian red giants

 

The trip to South Monterey was along the California’s rugged coastline and provided one of the most spectacular maritime vistas in the world. It has peaks dotted with the coast redwoods that go all the way to the water’s edge. The trip took you to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park where we got the opportunity to walk through the redwood forest. Along the way we stopped at numerous scenic vistas, it was definitely a memorable day .

 

On Thursday, all well rested, we had another hectic day full of presentations, this time it was Cessa’s turn, she would talk about the ‘Sea slugs of Southern Norway project as an example of citizen science’ (Picture 8. Cessa presenting the sea slugs of Southern Norway project). It was placed in the citizen science session and many that attended had questions about citizen science which constituted a great opportunity to share our experience acquired during the last year of our project.

Cessa presenting the sea slugs of Southern Norway project

Friday, on the last day of the conference, Manuel had his talk about the phylogeny and diversity of the Indo-West Pacific gastropods Haloa sensu lato (Cephalaspidea: Haminoeidae): Tethyan vicariance, generic diversity, and ecological specialization. This was part of the recent collaborative work his previous PhD student Trond Oskars

Manuel Malaquias presenting his and Trond’s work on the phylogeny of Haminoeidae

Jenny Neuhaus won the best poster award for her research on Jorunna tomentosa

 

The day was closed off with a big dinner and the award ceremony. Prizes were handed out to the best student’s oral and poster presentations. Jenny was awarded by the Malacological Society of London the prize for the best student poster. This was a very exciting way to end a successful conference trip!

 

 

 

-Cessa & Jenny

Success in the South; fieldwork in Mandal

From May 20th to 27th the sea slugs of Southern Norway team headed South to Mandal to pay a visit to the Mandal dykkerklubb and try to find more enthusiastic citizen scientist to join the sea slug project. We had a few special guests invited for the week and the team consisted of Cessa Rauch, Manuel Malaquias, Anders Schouw, Erling Svensen, Nils Aukan, Tine Kvamme and Heine Jensen. In Mandal the head of the club Erling Tønnessen would be there to help us around and organize club activities for collecting the sea slugs.

The first day basically consisted of traveling to Mandal and setting up our “hyttes” for a week of sea slug hunting. As usual we underestimated the amount of space needed to bring our ‘mobile’ lab to the camping site in Mandal. Even though a station wagon theoretically fit a family of five plus luggage, it was barely enough space for a family of sea slug hunters with their equipment.

Picture 1. We accomplished to fit everything in this rental car, picture Cessa Rauch

We ended up with a challenging Tetris game and me being squeezed between microscopes and jars in the back seat, still, no complaints! At least I was spared for driving the long hours from Bergen all the way to Mandal, that every local would be able to fix in less than 7 hours, we managed to take 12. I guess the car was heavy loaded! Manuel did a fantastic job while Anders and me where dozing off. Eventually we managed to arrive safely in Mandal and there we were greeted by our team of citizen scientists that helped us out through the week. They as well had to travel from all corners of the country; Kristiansund, Egersund, Oslo and Sarpsborg. It was quite special to arrive all together in Mandal with only one thing in our minds; finding sea slugs!

The next days in collaboration with the local Mandal dykkerklub and their fantastic club boat equipped with a lift to get people in and out of the water, we operated most of the sampling activities. After a day out collecting we would all go back to our cabins and start photographing and registering the samples.

Even though late spring is supposedly not the best season for collecting sea slugs, due to low abundance of the different species, together we were still able to collect 47 different species!

Picture 4. Overview of the species collected during fieldwork in Mandal

On our last day of the expedition, the Mandal dykkerklubb organized an evening social gathering for their members in which we had the chance to give a presentation about sea slugs and the project, and to give away a few sea slug sampling kits to all those interested.

Picture 5. Cessa and Manuel presenting the sea slugs of Southern Norway project, picture Erling Svensen

Picture 6. Interested dive members of the Mandal dykkerklubb showing up to learn more about sea slugs and having a good time, picture Erling Svensen

With every fieldwork trip we get more experienced in the organization and execution of the event and this is definitely paying off in the diversity of species we manage to collect. We were not able to register so many species before as with this fieldwork trip to Mandal. This was by far the most successful expedition and together with the joined efforts off all the excellent citizen scientist we formed a real professional sea slug team!

Picture 7. Group picture of the expedition members on board of the Mandal dykkerklubb boat, left to right; Heine Jensen, Erling Svensen, Anders Schouw, Cessa Rauch, Tine kinn kvamme, Nils Aukan and the expedition leader Manuel Malaquias in front, picture Erling Svensen

At the moment we are waiting for the first DNA barcode results in order to confirm the species diversity we found that week. An update will follow; but Manuel and I would like to take this opportunity to gratefully acknowledge all the efforts and interest of our team members of that week and the good times we had together! Hope to meet you all again soon during yet another sea slug hunt! Tusen takk!

-Cessa

Some hydroids, four naturalists, and a small island in the North Sea

NorHydro partner (and hydrozoan expert) Joan J. Soto Àngel from the Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology went in a sampling trip to Kinn to collect benthic hydroids. Here is an account of his experience in this trip:

Kinn is a small grassy island on the western Norwegian coast. Today it is a quiet, peaceful place with only a few inhabitants, but in the past it was an important fishing town and the center of the cultural and religious life of the area, as evidenced by its imposing medieval stone church (Kinnakyrkja). The island is also a place of historical relevance for biologists, since it is intimately tied to the life and discoveries of one of the most prominent naturalists of the XIX century, Michael Sars, who worked as a priest in Kinnakyrkja for many years.

Here I am, ready to sample! The island behind is Kinn, easy to recognize thanks to its characteristic cleft silhouette. Picture: Cessa Rauch

The islands in the area face the ocean and are rather exposed, so the vegetation is not particularly tall, but the waters are teeming with life. Picture: Joan J. Soto

The XIX century Norwegian naturalist Michael Sars. Picture from Wikicommons (public domain)

Sars described many species inhabiting the waters around Kinn and also made key observations about their distribution and life cycle. Indeed, he was the first to discover that jellyfish and polyps are in fact different stages of the same animals!

This finding led him to be recognized as an outstanding zoologist of his time. Even now, ca 200 years after, his extensive work is regularly consulted by researchers of many fields. Like me and the other participants of the Artsdatabanken project NorHydro, Sars was fascinated by the group we call Hydrozoa, which is why it was very interesting for our project to join a sampling trip of the University Museum of Bergen in the same waters where he sampled and described many hydroids, hydromedusae and siphonophores.

Because Sars was also interested in other critters of the sea besides hydrozoans, it was only natural to make this sampling trip a joint, collaborative effort. In our case, three marine scientists were involved, each representing a different project: I was in charge of the hydrozoans for NorHydro, while Anne Helene Solberg Tandberg focused on amphipods (NorAmph2) and Cessa Rauch concentrated on sea slugs (Sea Slugs of Southern Norway). But we did not limit ourselves to our favorite animal groups; we also sampled some poychaetes, bryozoans, ascidians and echinoderms for two other projects based at UMB, Hardbunnsfauna and AnDeepNor. In addition, while we sampled extensively the waters around Kinn, we also stopped in the way to the island and back and collected some animals in two other localities in the coast of Sogn og Fjordane. Our efforts paid off and, despite some windy weather, we came home with many specimens to analyze and samples to sort.

Three more contemporary naturalists working for different projects: Joan (left, NorHydro), Cessa (middle, Sea Slugs of Southern Norway), and Anne Helene (right, NorAmph2). Picture: Joan J. Soto

For the hydrozoans, the majority of samples consisted in colonies of hydroids belonging to the families Sertulariidae, Haleciidae and Campanulariidae. This was not surprising as Sertulariidae (sensu lato) is the largest and most diverse family in all Hydrozoa, and their conspicuous colonies are relatively easy to recognize and collect. The haleciids are represented in Norway mainly by species of Halecium, whose colonies are among the largest benthic hydrozoans of the country. As for the campanulariids, particularly those belonging to genera Obelia, Laomedea and Clytia, they are common inhabitants of rocky and mixed bottoms all around the world, and are especially conspicuous when growing on macroalgae such as kelp. To correctly identify some of these specimens, we will look closely at their morphological characteristics and will also employ molecular techniques of DNA analysis. Hopefully this approach will help us understand the diversity of benthic hydroids living around Kinn, and will allow us to determine whether the species that we encountered are the same that Sars studied.

Dynamena pumila was one of the most conspicuous species of hydroid that we collected in this trip. It belongs to the speciose family Sertulariidae.

We were very lucky to have the help of the crew of RV Hans Brattström. This is how the command center of the boat looks like!

You’ll find the results of these and other NorHydro’s analyses here in the blog as we progress, and more updates on the project can be found on the Hydrozoan Science facebook page and in Twitter with the hashtag #NorHydro.

– Joan

References and related literature about Michael Sars

Tandberg AHS, L Martell (2018) En uimodstaaelig lyst til naturens studium. Yearbook of the University Museum of Bergen: 17 – 26.

Sars M (1835) Beskrivelser og Iagttagelser over nogle mærkelige eller nye i Havet ved den Bergenske Kyst levende Dyr af polypernes, acalephernes, radiaternes, annelidernes, og molluskernes classer. Thorstein Hallagers forlag, Bergen.

Windsor MP (1976) Starfish, jellyfish and the order of life. Issues in Nineteenth-Century Science. Yale University Press, New Haven. 228 pp

Workshop week at Espegrend field station

The final week of March was teeming with activity, as no less than three Norwegian Taxonomy Projects (Artsprosjekt) from the Invertebrate Collections arranged a workshop and fieldwork in the University of Bergen’s Marine biological field station in Espegrend.

The projects – Sea Slugs of Southern Norway(SSoSN), Norwegian Hydrozoa (NorHydro) and Invertebrate fauna of marine rocky shallow-water habitats: species mapping and DNA barcoding (Hardbunnfauna) fortunately overlap quite a bit in where and how we find our animals (as in, Cessa’s seaslugs are eating the organisms the rest of us are studying..!), and so it made sense that we collaborated closely during this event.

That meant more hands available to do the work, more knowledge to be shared – and definitely more fun! All projects had invited guests, mostly specialists in certain groups, but also citizen scientists, and our students participating. We stayed at the field station, which has excellent facilities for both lodging and lab work.

Participants on our Artsprojects workshop in March. Left from back: Peter Schuchert, Manuel Malaquias, Bjørn Gulliksen, Jon Kongsrud, Tom Alvestad, Gonzalo Giribet. Middle row from left: Heine Jensen, Luis Martell, Endre Willassen, Eivind Oug, Front row from left: Katrine Kongshavn, Cessa Rauch and Jenny Neuhaus (Photo: Heine Jensen)

The fieldwork was carried out in the Bergen region, and was done in various ways. We had the R/V “Hans Brattstrøm” available for two days, where we were able to use triangular dredges, plankton net, and grab to sample.

Other days we used a small boat from the station to go to the islands close to Espegrend to examine the tide pools and tidal belt. We also went to local marinas and scraped off what was living on the piers, and a brave soul donned her wet suit and went snorkeling, which enabled us to sample very specific points of interest (“take that green thing over there!”).

We are fortunate here in Bergen in that we have a very active local student dive club, SUB-BSI, whose divers kindly kept an eye out for – and even collected – some of our target animals, as well as sharing their photos of the animals in their natural habitat, all of which is amazing for our projects!
We gave short presentations of each of the projects at SUB in the beginning of the week, and invited the divers out to the lab to on the following Thursday to show some of the things we are working on. It was a very nice evening, with a lot of interested people coming out to look at our critters in the lab. We also decimated no less than 14 homemade pizzas during that evening – learning new stuff is hard work!

Guests in the lab (photos K. Kongshavn)

All together, this made it possible for us to get material from an impressive number of sites; 20 stations were sampled, and we are now working on processing the samples.

The locations where we samples during the week (map: K. Kongshavn)

We are  very grateful to all our participants and helpers for making this a productive and fun week, and we’ll make more blog posts detailing what each project found – keep an eye out for those!

You can also keep up with us on the following media:

 NorHydro: Hydrozoan Science on Facebook, and Twitter #NorHydro

@Hardbunnsfauna on Instagram and Twitter

SeaSlugs: on Instagram and in the Facebookgroup

 –Cessa, Luis & Katrine

Sea slug hunt in Egersund!

I’m always scared to look at the current date, time flies! It was already two months ago that we went on a blitz fieldwork trip to Egersund with a very special group of people. But nevertheless, good times become good memories (and especially good museum specimens) and it definitely does not get too old for a small blog about it.

From January 17 to January 21 a small group of sea slug enthusiasts consisting of a student, citizen scientists, a collaborator and museum members rented a van and drove 7 hours down to our Southern neighbor town Egersund.

Egersund was not randomly picked as it is the home town to one of Norway’s most productive and dedicated ‘citizen scientist’; Erling Svensen. Author of a number of books and the most well-known and worldwide used ‘Dyreliv I havet – nordeuropeisk marin fauna’ (English Marine fish and invertebrates of Northern Europe), which amateurs and professionals alike use as an extensive research source.

Erling Svensen’s famous book Dyreliv I Havet

With his almost 5000 dives and counting, Erling knows the critters of the North Sea, big and small, on the back of his hand. Already since the beginning of the sea slug project, Erling was helping providing valuable sea slug species, so it was about time to pay him a visit and bring our team over to make Egersund “biologically unsafe” – enough so to end up in the local news!

We made Egersund unsafe enough to have a small news item about it in the ‘Dalane Tidende’, a local newspaper

The group consisted of Manuel, Cessa, citizen scientist Anders Schouw, collaborator from Havard University Juan Moles and master student Jenny Neuhaus

From left to right Erling Svensen, Anders Schouw, Jenny Neuhaus, Cessa Rauch, Juan Moles and Manuel Malaquias. Photo by Erling Svensen

Jenny just started her Masters in Marine Biology at the University of Bergen in the fall of 2018, she will be writing her thesis on the diversity of sea slugs from the Hordaland county and on the systematics of the genus Jorunna (Nudibranchia) in Europe. The results of this work will definitely become a blog entry of its own.

Jorunna tomentosa, Jennies new pet! Photo by Nils Aukan.

Two of the five days of our fieldwork were basically spendt driving up and down from Bergen to Egersund, it left us only with a good 3 days to get an overview of Erling’s backyard sea slug species. Little time as you can imagine. But time was used efficiently, as Anders and Erling are both extremely good sea slug spotters and with help of sea slug specialist Juan and the eager helping hand of Jenny, Manuel and I were able to identify and add 36 species to our museum sea slug database.

Overview of collected specimens in Egersund

In comparison, we registered 41 one species in Drøbak last year by spending almost a week at the field station! No one thought this would be the outcome (not even Erling himself, as he mentioned that he didn’t find that many sea slug species this time of year on earlier surveys). But we were all very happily surprised, and maybe it was not just luck but also the combination of people we had attending this short field trip. With so many good specialists, either professional or amateur, senior or junior, we were able to work extremely efficient and with a clear communal goal. There was little time spend in reinventing the wheel and explaining the work flow, it was a good valuable exercise that will definitely help us with future brief fieldwork trips and how to make the most from short and tight time schedules. Besides it was a very valuable experience for our student Jenny, as she got first-hand experience with what it’s like to see her study specimens alive, how to handle these fragile individuals, how to sort them from other species and how to document them, which is a good thing to know for her thesis and future career

Jenny learning a lot from the master himself. Photo by Erling Svensen

So yes, all in all our Egersund fieldtrip was short but very sweet!

Furthermore
You want to see more beautiful pictures of sea slugs of Norway! Check out the Sea slugs of Southern Norway Instagram account; and don’t forget to follow us. Become a member of the sea slugs of southern Norway Facebook group, stay updated and join the discussion.

Explore the world, read the invertebrate blogs!

-Cessa & Jenny