Category Archives: Student Projects

Strange creatures with strange parasites

Have you ever heard about chaetognaths, aka arrow worms? They are a phylum of worm-like animals mostly found as part of planktonic communities worldwide. Their name originates from chaeto (spines) and gnatha (jaws). As you can see in the picture below, their name refers to their hooked, grasping spines located on each side of their head. Chaetognaths use their spines to grasp their prey (sometimes other arrow worms!). Luckily for us, they are just a few cm long, up to 10-12 cm in some cases, so nothing to worry much about. They can also have a funny, Edvard Munch’s The Scream’s-like appearance, such as the benthic chaetognath below. With over 130 species described worldwide, our knowledge on their true diversity and distribution is still very scarce. What we do know is that they are one of the most important planktonic predators and the second-most abundant planktonic group. Most species are transparent, and often classified as part of the so-called gelatinous zooplankton. However, ca. 20% of the species are benthic chaetognaths that can be found close to the seabed (like the surprised guy below).

three images of arrow worms

Figure 1. Different appearances of arrow worms, the one on the right with a parasitic nematode. Credit: Zatelmar CC BY SA 3.0 (left), Luis Martell (middle) and Luis Martell and Joan J. Soto-Angel (right).

Through Artsdatabanken project ParaZoo (Metazoan Parasites of non-crustacean Zooplankton) we are studying the diversity of parasites associated with jellyfish, comb jellies and chaetognaths. As we found very interesting specimens from our sampling trips to Svalbard, we joined a recent trip to Torsvåg in Northern Norway, hoping to get additional material from this understudied area. You can read more about this joint fieldwork here and here. Our MSc student Lea will tell you a bit more about her MSc project, and her experience in Torsvåg.

From Lea:
Hei! I am Lea, a Master student working on my Master thesis about the last C in the C + C + C research group: Cnidaria, Ctenophora, and now Chaetognaths! I am working with parasites of chaetognaths in Norwegian waters, a still much understudied topic. On the sampling trip to Torsvåg in Northern Norway, I got first hand experiences with a variety of sampling methods, cool jellies, and getting to know everyone better from the marine team at the University Museum.

Among the sampling methods, my favourite was definitely catching the jellies with a small net on the pier (see Figure 2). There, we – fearless of the everchanging weather conditions – caught the biggest jellies of our trip. Afterwards, I was mainly in charge of checking jellies for parasites for the ParaZoo, where we found trematoda in 2 different jelly species!

Sadly, pelagic chaetognaths were very sparse in Torsvåg. We even deployed manually (!) a plankton net all the way to 200 m deep in search for chaetognaths, but we only found about 30 in total, that were also unparasitized. Luckily, the polychaete group next door could offer some comfort.

Let me introduce you to my absolute favourite species from the trip: The benthic chaetognath Spadella cephaloptera! Have a bad day? – Just take a look at the constantly surprised, concerned, and slightly uncanny face of this small fella! You can count on me overusing this species in my upcoming presentations!

All in all, I developed a lot of useful skills, ranging from identifying common (and uncommon) gelatinous zooplankton species to untangling a fishing rope! It was such an amazing experience to be part of this sampling trip!

Five images in a collage: three shots of fieldwork/sampling site, and two of the arrow worm

Figure 2. Net sampling from different locations in beautiful Torsvåg. Spadella cephaloptera looking constantly surprised due to the corona ciliata below the two eye pigments (Photos: Joan J. Soto-Angel and Lea Dober)

From Joan and Lea

Sampling of marine annelids in the Northern Norwegian waters

In the last week of June, the MAnDAriN project (Marine Annelid Diversity of Arctic Norway, homepage here) went for another* field trip to the areas around Tromsø.
This time we were focused on intertidal sampling in the inner fjords.

a collage of five images showing mudflats or sandy beaches in the intertidal zone

Figure 1. Different habitats sampled during the second field trip of MAnDAriN to Tromsø area (Photo by N. Budaeva).

Besides Nataliya and Tom, the sampling team included a dedicated young naturalist interested in digging up worms on the mudflats and watching for seabirds.

a collage of people sampling marine worms from piers and beaches

Figure 2. Sampling of marine annelids (polychaetes) (Photo by N. Budaeva).

Two researchers from NIVA, Eivind Oug and Rita Næss, joined us for the part of the trip helping with selecting the most interesting habitats and with sample collection. We sampled 18 intertidal and shallow subtidal stations scattered around Tromsø area, among those some beaches at Sommarøy, eelgrass mudflats in the inner Balsfjorden, sandy Grøtfjorden, and muddy habitats of Kvaløy.

The sampling was qualitative with light fraction of sediment sieved through 500 um sieve and later sorted in the lab under a stereomicroscope. We invested a lot of time in taking live images of the small polychaetes found in the samples, for that we had to relax them in a magnesium chloride solution that stops muscle contraction but keeps the worms alive. App. 900 photos of 400 specimens was taken during this trip. Each of the photographed specimens will become a DNA voucher for further barcoding and molecular analysis.

a collage of images showing the lab setup and two species of worms

Figure 3. Our laboratory set0up with photography equipment. The worms on the top right – tubes of Lagis koreni, and the bottom right – Malmgrenia sp.

MAnDAriN is supported by Artsdatabanken for 2023-2026 and will continue sampling in Svalbard and northern Finnmark fjords this and next year to provide a detailed description of annelid diversity in the coldest Norwegian waters.

*Eva, a master student on the project, has written about her experience joining the previous project fieldwork in Torsvåg (Troms) in May, you can read more about that here (link):

Torsvåg through the eyes of two of our MSc students

Student visits – Ellisiv and Maria

A guest post from two of our MSc students (in this case co-supervised with NTNU) who were here on a research visit for three weeks in January 2024. 

We are Maria Buhaug Grankvist and Ellisiv Tomasgard Raftevold, and for the past three weeks we have been visiting the University Museum in Bergen to work on our master’s projects. It’s been a lot of fun, a lot of hard work and very useful, as the Bergen University Museum really is the place to be when you’re working with marine invertebrates.

Both our theses focus on marine invertebrates, but two different phyla. Maria is working with cyclostomatid Bryozoans, while Ellisiv looks at Polychaetes. We write our masters for the NTNU University Museum in Trondheim in collaboration with the University Museum in Bergen and the projects “Digitization of Norwegian Bryozoa” (NorDigBryo) and “Marine Annelid Diversity in Arctic Norway” (ManDAriN). Keep reading, and you will learn about our projects and what we recommend to do when visiting Bergen!

Ellisiv’s marine annelids:
I’m Ellisiv and in my master’s thesis, I study a marine Annelid or Polychaete genus called Flabelligera within the family Flabelligeridae. Flabelligerids are mostly benthic and can be found from the intertidal zone down to the deep sea. They like living in the sand or mud, or under rocks, and they can be quite small and have sediment camouflage or a completely transparent body and outer sheath and may therefore be quite hard to find. If you do find them they are quite cool to look at, and if they are transparent, you can see their internal organs and green circulatory system. Their most prominent character is the cephalic cage, which is a circle of bristles around their mouths forming a kind of cage. In the ecosystem, these animals have an important role in that they for example eat the marine snow that falls to the bottom of the oceans so that it can be recycled back into the food chain.

Flabelligera affinis, a species within this genus was until recently thought to be only one species and was thought to have a worldwide distribution. This, however, was shown not to be true when Salazar-Vallejo 2012 restricted F. affinis to arctic areas and reinstated F. vaginifera which was previously synonymized with F. affinis, and proved that it was at least two different species sorted into one. Also looking at the material we have in the museum collections and DNA samples it was suspected that there are multiple different species sorted into F. affinis.

This is the problem I am trying to solve in my master’s thesis, and to do this I need to study the specimens found in the museum collections that are sorted to F. affinis and look at their different morphological characters and sort them into groups. This is mostly what I have done in Bergen. However, these species are very similar, and sequencing their DNA to look at their relatedness is a very useful addition to the morphology. Hopefully, I can get a step closer to solving this taxonomic confusion in my master’s and we can get to know how many species are hiding within Flabelligera.

Maria and the bryozoans:
I’m Maria, and for my master thesis I’m recording the diversity of bryozoan species within the order Cyclostomatida in Norwegian waters (meaning off the coast of Norway, the arctic ocean and some nearby areas). In addition to creating a checklist of recorded species, I’m mapping out their geographic and bathymetric distribution. In short, I’m trying to provide an answer to the question: What species of Cyclostomatida do we have, and where do they live?

There are two main reasons for studying this particular phylum in my thesis. First, they are strongly understudied, and according to a report published by the Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative in 2021, our understanding of bryozoan distribution and ecology is weak and unsatisfactory, even with “essential knowledge gaps” in some areas.
The second reason explains why it’s an issue that we know so little about these animals: They are majorly important for many marine ecosystems! Nearly all bryozoans are colonial, so even though the zooids (term for an individual animal in a colony) is only 0,1 – 0,5 mm long, the colonies can be as much as half a meter tall or wide! Many of the colonies have intricate shapes supported by heavily calcified structural zooids, providing habitats for a wide range of other animals. In this way, the bryozoans promote biodiversity in much the same way corals do, but they are far less known and barely protected by law like their coral counterparts.

To protect these beautiful colonial creatures we first of all need to know them better. Mapping the actual diversity and distribution of Norwegian bryozoans is far too large a task for a two year master thesis, but my thesis will hopefully contribute to the final results of the NorDigBryo project.

DNA sequencing
For both our theses we use an integrative approach, combining the morphology (what we see/the physical traits of the animals) with genetic sequence data. DNA sequencing is one of the things we got to do in Bergen, and it was very interesting to see how this is done from start to finish. We got to extract the DNA, use PCR and specific primers to amplify the DNA string of interest and gel electrophoresis to test if the prior methods worked.

For the successful sequences, we got to try the Sanger sequencing method, and it is very exciting to get to use some of our own sequences in our theses.

When in Bergen:
You’d might think that when we finish long days at the university museum, looking at marine invertebrates from dusk till dawn, we would go and do something completely different when the weekend comes. You’d be wrong!
In our spare time in Bergen, we went to see the University Museum of Natural History and were there almost from when it opened until it closed because there were so many interesting exhibitions. There are so many beautiful creatures on the planet, many of them and the story of how they evolved, you can learn about at the museum. We of course especially loved the “deep sea-room” where we would sit for a long time while watching a cephalopod swimming around deep sea sulfur vents..soothing.

More about the projects:
Marine Annelid Diversity in Arctic Norway (ManDAriN) home page (UiB)
ManDAriN presented at Artsdatabanken

Digitization of Norwegian Bryozoa (NorDigBryo) home page (UiO)
NorDigBryo presented at Artsdatabanken
NorDigBryo is also on Instagram – give us a follow!

-Ellisiv & Maria

It was our pleasure hosting these two enthusiastic guests, and we wish them luck in the thesis work – stay tuned for updates! 

PS: Interested in a marine master thesis at the University Museum of Bergen? Check out the blog detailing potential projects, or get in touch with the staff listed!

A popular science talk about mitochondria at the Science Library

The Science Library of “Realfagbygget” organizes every semester a series of popular science talks, entitled “Kunnskapseplet”, offering an arena for students, PhDs, researchers and other staff to talk about their work or other any topic they want to discuss about.

My PhD project is focused on the systematic revision of the family Orbiniidae (Annelida) using mitochondrial genomes and nuclear RNA gene clusters along with morphological analyses. Once the results were generated and the consequent discussion started, I wanted to take the opportunity to discuss, in a talk at the Science Library, about one of the main topics of my PhD: the mitochondrial genome and its use in systematics. So, I contacted the library and we arranged a talk on the 28.09.2023 with the name “What can the mitochondria reveal about evolution?”.

Two images of Miguel Meca standing in front of the projection screen giving his talk.

I opened the talk with the concept of evolution in Pokémon!, and later I used the analogy of asking any kind of information to a person, the same way in systematics we are asking evolutionary information to the mitochondria. Photos: Nataliya Budaeva.

On the day of the talk, the library workers decorated the entrance of the library with books related with the topic of the talk, and even a showcase with images of mitochondria and the poster of the talk!. Students, PhDs and researchers from “Realfagbygget” and other faculties belonging to the University of Bergen assisted to my talk, as well as visitors coming from other institutions outside academia, which gave me the feeling of transmitting knowledge to a wide audience.

Alt Text Fig. 2: Three images. First one is showing Miguel Meca holding an apple close to a shelf full of books. The second image contains a showcase with photos of mitochondria inside. The third image exhibits the audience of the event.

Decorations at the entrance of the library and audience of the event. Photos: Kjersti Hasle and Nataliya Budaeva.

I highly recommend giving a talk at the Science Library if you want to communicate your work out of your job circle.

You can find information about “Kunnskapseplet” here: https://www.uib.no/en/ub/123688/kunnskapseplet

-Miguel Meca

ForBio Annual Meeting 2023 at the University Museum of Bergen

ForBio – Research School in Biosystematics held its 12th Annual Meeting at the University Museum of Bergen on September 19-21st.Sixty participants from Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Czech Republic, Poland, Germany and Peru presented their research results in various fields of biosystematics.

The main day of the meeting took place in the Tårnsalen – a beautiful venue at the top of the museum building and was opened by a talk by Endre Willassen on the history of marine research at UiB.

The participants - 60 of them - in the historical Tårnsalen. The photo is taken from up on a gallery in the room, so it's a bird's eye view

The participants in Tårnsalen. Photo: ForBio

Four keynote speakers gave lectures on general biodiversity research topics of high interest to a wide audience.
Michael Bok from Lund University talked about the evolution of visual systems in marine annelids. Lovisa Gustafsson from the Stavanger Botanic Garden talked about the evolution of reproductive isolation in Arctic plants. Tomas Roslin from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences discussed the ways to assess enormous diversity of insects using DNA barcoding, and Agnes Weiner from NORCE gave a lecture on using ancient DNA in the past marine biodiversity assessments.

ForBio [LINK to homepage] is a cooperation between the main Natural History Museums in Norway: Natural History Museum, UiO; University Museum of Berge, UiB; NTNU University Museum; and the Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT and supported by the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre.

Collage showing people presenting, and a statue of Christie with a rainbow over it.

From top left: Endre Willassen presenting his talk on the history of marine research at UiB, Christie (the statue) standing outside the Museum in quite typical Bergen weather, Miguel Meca on the systematic revision of orbiniid polychaetes, the result of his PhD project, a snapshot of the program, Vincent McDaniel gives his speed talk about the parasites in jellyfishes (ParaZoo project), and Martha Everett gives her talk on the diversity of scale worms in the Arctic, the results of her PhD project

ForBio aims to advance biosystematics education for students and postdocs working in the fields of botany and zoology. The annual meetings is a great arena for the students to meet their peers and mor senior scientists and to present their research project results, exchange ideas and expand their networks.

You can find upcoming courses and events here: link

-Nataliya Budaeva
ForBio-coordinator

The Cnidaria+Ctenophora Research group at the PRIMALearning Jellyfish Workshop in South Africa

On the 12th of February at the crack of dawn, we had the amazing opportunity to go to Cape Town to attend a Jellyfish workshop. The “we” in question are the three authors of this blog post: Vincent, Vetle, and Håvard. We are master students all working with jellyfish-related topics, and some would go as far as to call us jellyfish enthusiasts. Our work is part of the museum’s Artsprosjekter NorHydro and ParaZoo, and we were happy to represent the invertebrate collections and UMB at this event.

The workshop, held at the Iziko South African Museum, was organized by PRIMALearning and was a collaborative initiative between the University of Bergen and the University of Western Cape. This gave the three of us, accompanied by a few other UiB students not affiliated with the University Museum of Bergen, the chance to visit Cape Town. Some of us for the first time.

On the first day of the workshop, we were greeted outside the museum by Mark Gibbons and his PhD student Michael Brown who was the representative from UWC and would be teaching parts of the workshop. With them was also Anne Gro Vea Salvanes as the representative for PRIMALearning and the University of Bergen, she was also joined by our own UMB scientists Aino Hosia and Luis Martell, who were also part of the teaching team.

The first day included introductions from all the participants, and we got to know each other bit better. We also got a brief introduction to the world of jellyfish and their taxonomy before the night ended with a delicious dinner together with all the participants.

The second day started with lectures about the large or ‘true’ jellies (Scyphozoa), before we got to get our hands dirty looking at preserved samples of jellyfish. We were met with a broad diversity of scyphozoans that was passed around between the students so we would get a shot at identifying them.

We examined fixed material of scyphozoan jellies representative of the three major groups within the class:

 

The rest of the day after the workshop was spent at the beach, enjoying the sun and local wine. Cape Town is called the windy city, and it did deliver on its name, but nothing could stop the sun-deprived Norwegian students from going outside to soak up some rays.

The third day was Hydrozoa day 1, a topic dear to our hearts and it was taught by our own MSc supervisor Luis Martell. Some of us were a bit tired this day because we decided to climb Lion’s head mountain before the workshop started to see the sunrise.

But this did not stop us from eagerly working with the preserved hydrozoan samples we got to look at. We identified all hydromedusae and siphonophores with the help of a stereomicroscope:

 A dissected carybdeid cubozoan jellyfish. IC: Håvard Vrålstad

 

Day four was box jellies (Cubozoa) day, a class neither of us was very familiar with. So we were excited to learn about these unknown and sometimes dangerous animals.

Luckily the animals were less deadly when preserved and we could therefore touch them while identifying them.

 

 

 

This day ended early so we took the opportunity to get down to Simon’s Town were we spent the rest of the day looking at the local penguins and wildlife at the beach.

A snapshot of the fauna we observed at Simon’s Town. IC: Vincent McDaniel

On our last day, we were introduced to the alien world of siphonophores by our own Aino Hosia. These animals are close to Håvards heart (if you ask him on a good day).

They were a nice ending to an awesome workshop, and we can honestly say now that our interest for jellyfish has grown, and we look forward to seeing even more of them in the future.

On February 19th the vacation/business trip was unfortunately over for Vetle and Vincent and they had to pack their bags and prepare to leave Cape Town and head home to Bergen, while the “slightly” more fortunate Håvard stayed behind in the windy city to enjoy a few more days of leisure.

Participants and teachers at the jellyfish workshop. IC: Anne Gro Vea Salvanes

We want to thank PRIMALearning for arranging the workshop, the University of the Western Cape for hosting and providing us with samples to work with, the Iziko Museum of South Africa for the location as well as providing refreshments, and to the University of Bergen for arranging accommodations. Also, a very special thanks to all the lecturers who presented and were very patient with us during the lab work.

-Vetle, Vincent, and Håvard

Are you interested in becoming a master student in marine biology at the University Museum of Bergen? Information about available projects can be found here (more will be added soon!):

Marine Masters at the University Museum of Bergen
– available thesis topics in marine biodiversity

Hydrozoan team at ForBio 2022 annual Meeting

Do you remember that feeling of dread before you must present in class about a topic you didn’t really study for? Your mind racing, trying to scramble a coherent story to tell the sea of eyes fixed expressionless on you and your powerpoint? We believe we all have at least one memory of this from our days in college.

That was a similar feeling to what we felt on November 28th, 2022, when we had just landed in Trondheim and were on our way to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) for this year’s ForBio Meeting, a 3-day gauntlet where we will present the Master’s projects we’re currently working on. Except this time, we weren’t presenting in a small classroom full of uninterested teenagers thinking about tik tok dances, but in an auditorium full of fellow researchers who work on your same field, and who will probably have extremely difficult questions at the end of your talk. Being the first time we present in an environment like this, one can’t help but imagine all the worst outcomes

And so we’re sitting there, watching the hours and the talks go by, thinking to ourselves “I should/shouldn’t try that for my talk!”. At lunch, all we think about is our talks. When we’re doing some light sightseeing in Trondheim, all we think about is our talks. We’re laying in our beds the night before, and all we think about is our talks. “How will I make my topic sound as professional and knowledgeable as I want to?”, we think to ourselves.

The day arrives, and again the dread starts setting in, right until the moment they call each of our names. At our every turn, we walk down the steps, grab the microphone, and start talking. Except for some reason, this time it feels like we’re in control. The words flow effortlessly; we even crack a joke or two, and the audience laughs. There’s no stumbling around the words like those college days.

Because this time, we’re not the average seat-warming student. This time, we’re the ones that have spent cold and raining hours on a research vessel or diving to get our samples; we’re the ones who have spent hours working together with our supervisors, reading and learning about our topics; we’re the ones who have spent hours looking down a microscope trying to identify our organisms. This time, we’re the ones who know what we’re talking about, and the audience is there to learn from us.

After each of our talks, we give our acknowledgements, and everyone claps. The questions thrown at you are answered effortlessly, and the moment is finished with a thumbs up to our supervisors, returning to our seats smiling.

The most exciting part for us was showing to experts what we do with our favorite invertebrates: Hydrozoans. These organisms are an inconspicuous class in the phylum Cnidaria that most people ignore. Our job was not only to present what we do with them, but to show what they are, what they do, how fascinating they can be and why they are important. And we think that we did a good job.

Now we’re finally free to enjoy the world famous Trondheim bike lift (and the Nidaros Cathedral too), closing the night with burgers, beer and friends.

Everything has been great on this trip and we will always remember the advice from other professionals; how different or similar the work of each one is; and the feeling that you are part of a group of specialists who are excited to share their knowledge with others. But, above all, we have learned why these conferences are important: Knowing what other researchers are doing gives us the chance to collaborate together and help each other, because working as a team is how science moves forward.

The hydrozoa group (and friends) from UiB participating at the ForBio meeting

Pedro, Ana & Håvard

Student visit – Ana González

MSc student Ana González visited the collections last month as part of project NorHydro, where she spent some weeks in the lab working with her samples. Here is an account of her experience:

The challenge of identifying benthic hydrozoans
Hydrozoa is a fascinating but poorly understood group of invertebrates, in part because their identification is not always an easy task. I have been studying benthic hydrozoan communities for over a year now, in particular those living in the shallow waters of Mallorca (Spain), and I have realized that the diversity of forms and structures in the group is higher than I had imagined at the beginning of my studies, and their identification is more difficult than I expected. The assemblages of hydrozoans in the Mediterranean are of course very different from the ones that occur in Norway, but something that both communities have in common is that morphological identification of the animals (i.e. telling which species is present based only on the characteristics we can observe) is challenging, which is why one of the aims of my visit to the University Museum of Bergen last December was to learn a different technique (DNA barcoding) that can help me improve the identification of my samples in cases when the morphology of the specimens is not good enough.

Some of the morphological characters that are used to identify benthic hydrozoans. On the left side a member of Campanulariidae, with a stolonal colony, and on the right side Monotheca obliqua with an erect colony.

DNA barcoding consists in finding a short DNA sequence (the barcode) that is similar for all members of one species but different from all other species. It is a relatively recent tool that –among other things– has helped the scientific community identify specimens that for one reason or the other cannot be identified based on how they look. In some groups, such as many colonial invertebrates, this technique has become a key asset because the colonies are often too young or not reproductive, or the important characters for identifications may be found only in one stage of the life cycle and not in others. For this visit I had the chance to bring all my samples from Mallorca to Bergen and I set to extracting the DNA of selected specimens, amplifying two different barcode genes (COI and 16S), and obtaining clean sequences for them. I discovered that, when it comes to DNA barcoding, every step of the process is important, and being patient and careful is essential.

Me at the DNA lab, running the electrophoresis for my samples.

Getting good results in the DNA lab depends on several factors like not forgetting any step and avoiding contamination as far as possible, but the work does not end there: once you have your sequences they have to be cleaned, quality-checked, and finally compared with others. This means that having a complete and trustworthy database of DNA barcodes is necessary, especially if you want to use the sequence to help you corroborate the identification of a specimen. When done right and with a good database, the DNA barcodes can be useful to detect differences between hydrozoan assemblages growing in different parts of the world or between different substrates and levels of anthropogenic impact, which is what I am doing in my MSc project.

Left: Clytia sp growing on the marine plant Posidonia oceanica. Center: A polyp of Halecium sp, one of the most difficult genera of Hydrozoa to identify based only in morphology, especially when the colony is not reproductive. Right: Eudendrium sp., found in harbours in Mallorca in high abundances.

The analysis of DNA sequences is a powerful tool to compare specimens of distinct populations and in some cases animals that apparently belong to the same species turn out to be completely different (e.g. cryptic species). This is not uncommon for benthic hydrozoans, which have high morphological diversity but also high levels of plasticity, resulting in colonies from different species sometimes being very similar to each other when they grow in similar substrates. As useful as DNA analyses are, however, it is also important to consider their limitations. For example, while the abundance of each species in a given community is important to describe the ecological status of a habitat, estimating abundance is still not always possible from sequence reads in DNA analyses.

Many cryptic species have been discovered in Aglaopheniidae thanks to the combination of DNA barcoding and morphological analysis

The use of DNA barcodes in my work is not limited to my current project, as I hope my identifications and sequences will help a little bit to improve the databases for future studies of hydrozoan communities in the Mediterranean Sea, and maybe even allow other researchers to compare their samples with the species found on other parts of the world. I think that looking closely at each specimen is the best way to truly know variation, so both morphology observations and DNA analyses should be combined to obtain good estimates of the diversity of a taxon in any locality. For example, whenever the DNA analyses reveal differences in two clades that were thought to be the same species, it is time to search for new taxonomic characters that we might have missed before, and for that reason it is also important to have a good knowledge of the morphology of each species. Both morphological and DNA-based identifications have limitations and advantages so, if you have the opportunity to use both, why choose only one?

Ana

2021 in review for Hardbunnsfauna

Another year of our “Hardbunnsfauna”-project;  Invertebrate fauna of marine rocky shallow-water habitats: species mapping and DNA barcoding (funded by the Norwegian taxonomy Initiative) is coming to an end.

I opted for an easy way to show some of the activities we’ve had on our by selecting a post from each month on our Instagram account to share.

Do give us a follow, if you aren’t already: we are @hardbunnsfauna on both Instagram and Twitter!

Click on the images to expand them

January: Field work on R/V Hans Brattstrøm in gorgeous (but FREEZING) weather

February: our report from field work in Saltstraumen got published

March: Workshop at Espegrend field station together with the projects HypCop and NorChitons

April: results are coming in on some of the DNA barcoding we are doing. Sponges (like the blue one here) are tricky to barcode, but we are getting some interesting results!

May: we have also barcoded a lot of other groups, including a substantial amount of microgastropods (tiny snails)

June: The first master student from the project successfully presented his thesis

July: We played marine invertebrate bingo (did you get a full set..?)

August: Fieldwork in the neighborhood; we sampled invertebrates from the fjord clean-up SUB was doing in Puddefjorden

September: We participated at an event at Os together with Havkollektivet, introducing the invertebrate and vertebrate locals to each other

October: Katrine was on a research cruise with limited internet, but did sample many interesting critters for the project

November: Field work in Haugesund, where Slettaa Dykkerklubb arranged a course on marine biology for divers

December: Pre-end-of-year-hectic-season, but we are enjoying the contributions coming in (physical and electronic) from our wonderful citizen scientists!

Then we wish you all some very
-Katrine

Research internship – Carla García Carrancio

On summer 2021 I had the opportunity to conduct a research visit at the University Museum of Bergen under project NorHydro. Concretely, I was working with the hydrozoan collections, where I got to know first-hand the role played by the curators and the importance of the collections. I examined several specimens and digitalized their associated data creating e-vouchers. Having all the information of specimens in a digital format is very important because it allows other researchers to access the material without having to come to the museum and helps to make the inventory more accessible and organised. I also improved my knowledge of hydrozoan diversity by identifying numerous specimens deposited at the museum. For that, I used some keys for both thecate and athecate hydroids from North—West European waters as well as the guidance of my MSc supervisor Luis Martell.

The main difference between leptothecate and anthoathecate hydroids is the lack of theca in the latter (the theca is a cup-like structure that protects the polyps), but some of them can be very tricky to identify since anthoathecate hydroids may have theca-like structures, and the theca of lepthothecate polyps may be difficult to see at first sight. Also, when you look at a sample, you may found several hydrozoans growing on the same substrate all together, making identification even more difficult. One of the characteristics used to differentiate species is the presence and the shape of the reproductive structures (gonophores), but they are not always present if the polyps are not reproductive.

Sertularella rugosa (top row) is without a doubt one of my favourite hydrozoans. The hydrothecae resemble a bee hive and the colony has a zig-zag appearance. However, it is easy to confuse it with Sertularella tenella (bottom row). Pictures credits: Carla García.

Polyps of the family Campanulariidae. This common family is characterized by the presence of a bell-shaped theca. Pictures credits: Carla García.

During my stay, I also had the chance to go sampling on a research boat, which helped me to understand better the procedures and requirements that are necessary to collect hydrozoans. We used a wide-mouthed plankton net that went up and down at a constant speed to avoid damaging the jellies and other gelatinous organisms from the plankton. After sampling, we took the cod-end to the laboratory. There, the content of the cod-end was poured on a light table. Then, we selected interesting specimens (including hydromedusae belonging to genus Euphysa) with wide mouthed pipettes and transferred them to Petri dishes filled with fresh seawater to observe them better under a microscope.

Towing the plankton-net which went down to 650m to capture some gelatinous organisms. As you can imagine, going up and down such a long distance takes a lot of time, but it is never boring with colleagues like Aino Hosia (right). Picture credits: Carla García.

I was lucky enough to get samples of Euphysa aurata and Euphysa sp., but they did not want to pose for my photo and kept moving around. Picture credits: Carla García.

We took the opportunity to collect some shallow-water benthic hydroids just in front of the Marine Station. Picture credit: Carla García.

Last but not least, I worked at the DNA lab, which allowed me to gain experience in new molecular techniques that I had not used before and to adapt myself to different (and very modern) facilities.

This experience has been simply great for me. I loved the working environment and the fact that everybody was always there to give me a hand. I have learned a lot and I am taking with me many friends that I hope to meet again when I come back to Bergen.

If you want to know more about projects of NorHydro and HYPNO, visit NorHydro’s home page and Facebook page, and check the hashtags #HYPNO and #NorHydro inTwitter.

               

-Carla García-Carrancio