Category Archives: Field work

Door # 6: Stuffed Syllid

Todays calendar critter is a Trypanosyllis sp. – a undescribed species from the genera Trypanosyllis in the family Syllidae. It most closely resembles a species described from the Mediterranean Sea. The Norwegian species is common in coral rubble, and has been assumed to be the same species as the one described from the Mediterranean. Genetic work reveals that these two are in fact separate species, and thus the Norwegian one is a new species awaiting formal description and naming. (If you read Norwegian, you can learn more about how species are described and named here: Slik gir vi navn til nye arter).

A new species of Trypanosyllis, collected in Sletvik, Norway. Photo by Arne Nygren. CC-by-sa

This specimen was collected, identified and photographed by Arne Nygren during our field work in Sletvik as part of his work on cryptic polychate species in Norway.

Syllids have opted for a rather fascinating way of ensuring high fertilization rates; something called epitoky: they asexually produce a special individual – the epitokous individual – from their bodies, and release this to go swimming in search of a mate. In the photo you can see that the female reproductive body (epitoke) is filled with orange eggs and has its own set of eyes, close to the middle of the animal. This section will break away from the mother animal and swim away in search of a male reproductive body to reproduce with. The mother animal will then grow a new female reproductive body.

-Arne & Katrine

Door #5: A visit from Mario

The collections have many guest researchers come here to work on our material, and one of our most frequent guests of lately has been Mario, who makes the long trip from Colombia to study both the West African material that we have from the MIWA-project, and to work on Nordic material. We asked him to make a contribution to the blog, and got the folllowing:

Mario in the lab

For October – November visit.

For my third time in the Museum, I have found, as always, very good company from my colleagues in the lab: Katrine, Nataliya, Jon and Tom. Deep morphology and molecular method discussions over very good coffee were the “breaks” between periods of hard work at the microscope.

This time, I take to my home two papers close to completion; one about species of the genus Pista (Terebellidae) with additional information to what I found during my last visit in January. The second paper is about species in the subfamily Polycirrinae (Terebellide) from the West coast of Africa.

The idea is combine drawings, digital photos of specimens with methyl-green staining pattern and SEM pictures, as well as molecular information that will hopefully help us separate species and make better estimates of the region’s biodiversity.

: Pista cristata au natural

: Pista cristata stained with colour to help with identifications

Field work – somewhat cold and windy

The visit – which was without snow and with only a few showers of rain in Bergen (!), though with some very cold and windy moments at the Marine Station of the University of Trondheim – and sharing time with recognized polychaetologist as Fred Pleijel, Torkild Bakken, Eivind Oug, and Arne Nygren, was as spectacular as to know the Aurora Borealis.

Aurora borealis and a (hooded) tropical visitor. Photo: K.Kongshavn

Door #4: A spindly Sunday

One of the cool things with the NorBOL-project is that it allows us spotlight animal groups that we don’t normally get to do much with. One such group is the sea spiders, or Pycnogonida. These spider-like critters wander around on the seafloor looking for other invertebrates to snack on (some also live on detritus and algae), and (presumably) for love. I certainly find a lot of them carrying egg sacks and young ones, so they must succeed every now and then! In the Pycnogonida, it is the males who care for the laid eggs and the young, rolling the eggs into one or several balls that he carries around on his ovigers.

: Nymphon hirtipes with eggs. It was collected at Spitsbergen

: Nymphon hirtum from the Arctic

: Nymphon grossipes collected by MAREANO

: Many, many juveniles on this Nymphon hirtum

The ones I photographed ranged from tiny to over 30 cm:

Colossendeis angusta, collected by MAREANO – this is bigger than a handful

Ammothea echinata from the day when we joined the local student dive club – the animal is only a few mm

Anatomy of a pycnogonid: A: head; B: thorax; C: abdomen 1: proboscis; 2: chelifores; 3: palps; 4: ovigers; 5: egg sacs; 6a–6d: four pairs of legs Sars, G. O. (1895). An account of the Crustacea of Norway, with short descriptions and figures of all the species. Christiania, Copenhagen, A. Cammermeyer. L. Fdez (LP) – digitization and colouration. - Own work External anatomy of Nymphon sea spider. After G. O. Sars (1895).

Anatomy of a pycnogonid: A: head; B: thorax; C: abdomen 1: proboscis; 2: chelifores; 3: palps; 4: ovigers; 5: egg sacs; 6a–6d: four pairs of legs L. Fdez (LP) – digitization and colouration. – Own work based on External anatomy of Nymphon sea spider. After G. O. Sars (1895).

At first glance they look a lot like the spiders we find on land, but they are really a very different class of animals (literally!); The sea spiders are found within Animalia (Kingdom) > Arthropoda (Phylum) > Chelicerata (Subphylum) > Pycnogonida (Class) (from WoRMS), whilst “land spiders” are found within the order Aranea in the class Arachnida.

Extant (now-living) members of the Pycnogonida are found within the order Pantopoda, which translates into “all legs”, which describes them quite well! They have even moved most of their internal organs (of which they have rather few; respiration is done across the body surface, so no gills) into the legs.

The more I look at them, the funnier they look – but that may be in the eye of the beholder, as a few arachnophobes passing by the camera have declared loudly that there is nothing charming to find here – I beg to disagree!

Goofy looking Nymphon stroemi (note the cheliphores/claws)

Goofy looking Nymphon stroemi (note the chelipores/claws) and the eyes on a tubercle on the head – they have eyes facing both forwards and backwards

Pycnogonum litorale

Some species, like this Nymphon gracile, can also swim: “…the swimming motions are the same as those used in walking, but more vigorously executed” King 1974

Nymphon hirtipes with hitchikers

Pseudopallene circularis from Spitsbergen

They are usually slow movers: Hover over the image to see a pycnogonid walking on the sea floor

To fill a plate with tissue samples from 95 specimens (1 animal = 1 specimen) of pycnogonida doesn’t sound too complicated, does it? Well, it turned out to be a bit of an adventure to gather enough animals that had been preserved in such a way that we could get DNA out of them (older material is usually fixated in Formaldehyde, which makes it unsuited for genetic work), and that was identified (had a name to them). Since we are in the process of building up the national (and international) reference library (the BOLD database) that the short DNA-segments (the “barcodes”) are to be matched up to later when someone wants to know which species “Animal X” belongs to, we need to know which species we are submitting for sequencing.

Our collection of barcode-compatible identified pycnogonids received a welcome boost when the shipment of processed material (identified, and measured for biomass) from MAREANO‘s beamtrals collected in 2013 arrived, as these had been fixated in ethanol – and identified by researchers who have worked extensively with the group.

Even so, I couldn’t fill a whole plate with only those specimens. Thankfully, I have skilled collegues that were able to put species names to almost all of the critters I could hunt down in our collections, and so now we have 95 animals ready from 26 different species! We also have some bona fide mysteries that we hope the BOLD-database will help us solve as well; animals that does not comply with any of the identification keys…!

Fingers crossed for a very successful sequence run and a lot of new information about the Pycnogonida of Norway!

Pseudopallene longicollis, collected by MAREANO

Info:
King, P.E. 1974: British Sea Spiders, synopses of the British Fauna (New Series) No. 5

Door #3: a week in the field

We spent a lovely week in October collecting animals at the field station of NTNU in Agdenes in central Norway.

: Not too far from Trondheim…

: ..here!

: You’ll find the field station of Sletvik

About 15 researchers and collection curators were gathered for a week of sampling with gear ranging from grabs and trawls deployed from the research vessel Gunnerus to buckets and shovels on the beach. As you may be able to tell, a good time was had by all!

The field work was arranged by the our colleagues at NTNU University Museum, and served multiple purposes:

We collected ultra-fresh material for barcoding through the norwegian Barcode of Live project (NorBOL) – several plates were initiated during the week and then brought back to Bergen where we will continue filling them with material from our collections – each plate needs to be filled with 95 samples that can be run with the same primer, so we need to select our material carefully.
The marine collections of NTNU got a substantial boost
Fresh material was collected for teaching faunistics
Photodocumenting live specimens (we have some fantastic polychaete photos from this coming up later in our calendar)
Four Norwegian Species Initiative funded projects were participating, collecting material for their projects – as were people from the EU-project SponGES.
We at UM also relished the chance to sample in the littoral zone, which is a undersampled habitat in our collections

We are working on the material now, and some of it is scheduled to make an apperance on the blog over the next couple of weeks – so stay tuned!

Happy World Oceans Day

Today, June 8th, is the World Oceans Day, and of course we should celebrate the big old blue!

In wind or calm, with nice substrate or impossible-to-wash-clay samples, in rain and in sun – we love it! (photos: K.Kongshavn)

Join in on the celebrations with #WorldOceansDay

Seaweeds continued

An alternate world?

The week flew by in a flurry of Latin names, literature and sea water – today is the day for unpacking, making sure that everything is stored safely, and revising lists.

An impressive collection of species on the final day!

A voucher, neatly laid out and ready to be pressed.

Pressing voucher specimens

Tissue samples

In total we collected 88 samples of 76 different species, most of which are not in the BOLD database for Norway yet. It will be exciting to see what results we get!

: Pelvetia canaliculata

: Ceramium cf virgatum

: Ulva lactua

: Fucus serratus

: Chaetomorpha aerea/linum

: Chylocladia verticilliata

: Delesseria sanguinea

: Plocamium lyngbyanum

: Stealth zoology; Aplysia punctata

The tissue samples will be sent to the Saunders lab, as they have kindly offered collaborate on this collection and help us with the sequencing as our go-to lab in NorBOL is not optimally set up to deal with algae.

Thank you so much to all the students and teachers for being so welcoming, and for being good sports about me spiriting away your specimens!

On the hunt for seaweeds!

The red, the brown, and the green

This week the invertebrates are forced to take second place (!) as I have joined the master students participating on the course BIO309A – marine floristics out at our field station.

Lab work

The course is the sister course to Marine faunistics that I joined in on last fall. The focus of this week is the macroalgae; the seaweeds that most people are (passingly) familiar with. (The micro algae have been covered in lectures and lab work back at BIO earlier.)

We are doing a mix of field work and lab work. Every day we go out and sample, and bring the catch back to the lab to identify it. 1-2 specimens of each species that is identified is destined to become barcode vouchers for NorBOL, and go through the by now fairly familiar route of photo-tissue sampling-preservation for inclusion in the museum collection as a voucher. Seaweeds fixate badly in ethanol, so instead we are pressing them and making herbarium specimens. So far we have about 50 vouchers (from almost as many different species), and the number is sure to climb as we continue working our way through the fresh stuff we just collected.

Collecting just outside the station

Kjersti is explaining about the current habitat

Ah, such a hard day to be at sea!

Vivid!

Being ferried across to the island where we’ll examine the tide pools

Nice location!

“that one!”

Hunting

Wave exposed!

I do "happen" to find some animals *on the lagae as well - here's a beautiful nudibranch, a Doto cf. maculata

I do “happen” to find some animals *on the algae as well – here’s a beautiful nudibranch, a Doto cf. maculata

Undercover amphipod

Hydrozoans and two Aplysia punctata hanging out on a piece of Ascophyllum nodosum

Berthella sideralis, a rarity finally documented alive and barcoded!

The Pleurobranchidae sea slug species Berthella sideralis was described by the Swedish malacologist Sven Ludvig Lovén in 1846 based on specimens collect at Bohuslän, in southern Sweden not far from the city of Gothenburg. This species has hardly been mentioned in the literature after its original description, and no images of life species are to our best knowledge available in books, research papers or even web platforms – until now!

A synthesis of the morphological features of B. sideralis can be found in Cervera et al. (2010) who studied in detail two specimens collected during 1930’s in Trondheimfjord as part of a phylogenetic study of the genus Berthella.

Recently, in late November 2015 during a Museum scientific cruise – there is a blog post about this day of field work here – we collected one specimen in Hjeltefjorden (around Bergen) at 220 meters depth using an RP-sledge. This specimen is here documented and was recently genetically barcoded as part of our effort to barcode the Norwegian marine fauna through the NorBOL project.

A live specimen of Berthella sideralis. Ths scale bar i 5 mm. Photo: K. Kongshavn

A live specimen of Berthella sideralis. The scale bar i 5 mm. Photo: K. Kongshavn

Berthella sideralis is only known from Sweden and Norway. In Norway it has been reported between Bergen and Finnmark.

Reference: Cervera, J L., Gosliner, T. M., García-Gómez, J. C., & Ortea, J. A. 2010. A new species of Berthella Blainville, 1824 (Opisthobranchia, Notaspidea) from the Canary Island (Eastern Atlantic Ocean), with a re-examination of the phylogenetic relationships of the Notaspidea. Journal of Molluscan Studies, 66: 301–311.

-Manuel & Katrine

Door #21: A Norwegian oddity

In 1939 the Swedish malacologist Nils Odhner described the nudibranch Berghia norvegica based on two specimens collected at Frøya and Stjørna in the mouth of the Trondheimsfjord.

After its original description this species has been found very few times, the first of them by Hennig Lemche a Danish malacologist who in 1958 collected a single specimen, today housed at the Natural History Museum of Bergen (ZMBN 62033). The importance of this specimen, until recently the only one apparently available in museum collections, was demonstrated by its use in a systematics review of the genus Berghia recently completed by a team of Spanish and American researchers.

The original description of Berghia norvegica is fairly detailed, but was based on preserved specimens and therefore the colouration of this species remained elusive until very recently. For over half a century nothing was known about the colouration of this beautiful and unique animal and is only in 2011 and subsequent years that Berghia norvegica is finally rediscovered by divers and researchers participating in the NudiSafaris organized at Gulen in Sogn og Fjordane just north of Bergen.

These recent discoveries revealed the extreme beauty of this delicate animal and generated the first live images of this endemic and emblematic species of the Norwegian fauna, which we here illustrate with a photograph taken at Gulen on March, the 15^th of 2014 at 38 m deep and kindly made available by Kåre Telnes author of the website “The Marine Fauna and Flora of Norway”.

The sea slug Berghia norvegica, an endemic species from Norway. Photo: Kåre Telnes.

Suggested reading:

Carmona, L., Pola, M., Gosliner, T. M. & Cervera, J. L. 2014. The Atlantic-Mediterranean genus Berghia Trinchese, 1877 (Nudibranchia: Aeolidiidae): taxonomic review and phylogenetic analysis. Journal of Molluscan Studies, 80: 482–498.

Evertsen, J. & Bakken, T. 2013. Diversity of Norwegian sea slugs (Nudibranchia): new species to Norwegian coastal waters and new data on distribution of rare species. Fauna Norvegica, 32: 45–52.

Odhner, N.H. 1939. Opisthobranchiate Mollusca from the western and northern coasts of Norway. Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter, 1: 1–93.

Door #20: How many undescribed bristle worms live in Australian waters?

The answer is, of course, “we don’t know”. But we *can* say that Australian polychaete fauna is largely undescribed. As an example, 91 new species and 67 new records of polychaete worms were found in the vicinity of a single small island at Great Barrier Reef as a result of a joint effort of 16 polychaete experts that spent two weeks at the Lizard Island Research Station of the Australian Museum in 2013.

Not only the Great Barrier Reef polychaete fauna is poorly studied, various areas of Australian east coast apparently also have numerous undescribed species especially in the deeper waters. Here you can see few examples of recently described new species of bristle worms from Australian.

Rhamphobrachium nutrix Paxton & Budaeva, 2015 from the Lizard Island, 9-36 m

Paradiopatra piccola Paxton & Budaeva, 2013 from eastern Australia, 124-500 m

Undescribed species from the genus Onuphis from the Lizard Island, intertidal (Photo: A. Semenov)

Anchinothria parvula Budaeva & Paxton 2013 from eastern Australia, 244 m

Neosabellides lizae from the intertidal (Alvestad T., Budaeva N. 2015)

Suggested reading:

Special Volume Zootaxa 4019 (Open Access) Coral reef-associated fauna of Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef: polychaetes and allies http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/list/2015/4019(1).html

Alvestad T., Budaeva N. 2015. Neosabellides lizae, a new species of Ampharetidae (Annelida) from Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Zootaxa, 4019: 61–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4019.1.6

Paxton H., Budaeva N. 2015. Minibrachium, a new subgenus of Rhamphobrachium (Annelida: Onuphidae) from Australia with the description of three new species. Zootaxa, 4019: 621–634. http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4019.1.21

Budaeva N., Paxton. H. 2013. Nothria and Anchinothria (Annelida: Onuphidae) from Eastern Australian waters with a discussion of ontogenetic variation of diagnostic characters. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the UK, 93: 1481–1502. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0025315412001956

Paxton H., Budaeva N. 2013. Paradiopatra (Annelida: Onuphidae) from eastern Australian waters, with the description of six new species. Zootaxa, 3686: 140–164. http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3686.2.2

Nataliya Budaeva’s web page: http://nataliyabudaeva.wix.com/nataliyabudaeva

-Nataliya

The Invertebrate Collections

The University Museum of Bergen