Workshop: Polychaete diversity in the Norwegian Sea

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

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The making of plans

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Working hard

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The Polychaete pack gathered

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

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

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

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Odontosyllis sp

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A Paranaitis wahlbergi

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A member of the family Sabellidae

 

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

Phylogenetics course

Phylogenetics course 2014

Phylogenetics course 2014

This week was dedicated to phylogenetics. In five intensive sessions on the computer lab, students were practising exercises using a range of different software packages. The main purpose with the course is to get some hands-on experience with the work-flow from phylogenetic data to phylogenetic trees and their interpretation. Course instructors were teachers and PhD-students associated with the Invertebrate Collections.
The course is also open for students in the internordic Research School in Bioinformatics run by four university museums in Norway: ForBio. In addition to students from UiB, this year we also had visitors from the Universities of Iceland, University of Copenhagen, Gothenburg University, University of Oulu, and the University of Salford, UK.

Collecting in the Oslofjord

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

 

The 7th Congress of The European Malacological Societies

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

St. Catherine’s

St. Catherine’s

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

Talks in the Auditorium

Talks in the Auditorium

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

International Conference on Crustacea in Frankfurt

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The Casino building of the Goethe University

Almost 300 researchers from many nations were convened last week at the beautiful Campus Westend of the Goethe–University in Frankfurt for the 8th International Crustacean Congress (ICC-8). Many interesting talks and high quality posters were presented over six days. A special workshop on DNA-identification and barcoding filled the auditorium to the the edge and left many attendants standing through the session. EW gave a 15 minutes talk on results from our barcoding of decapods and stomatopods. He particularly emphasized how barcoding can reveal discordant species identifications among different labs and research environments and pinpoint the need for reidentification and / or taxonomic revision of species.ICC-8_presentation

Kenneth Meland (BIO, UiB) presented results from phylogenetic analyses of the ancient group Lophogastrida.  Separate analyses of morphological characters and DNA from four genes show surprisingly congruent results and have given us a new understanding of relations among  the  families of the group. Meland cooperates with EW and Stefan Richter (Univ. Rostock) in this  project.

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The Museum’s scientific cruise of 2014

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

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

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

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

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

Grab

Grab

Netting for fish in the littoral zone

Netting for fish in the littoral zone

Collecting in the littoral zone

Collecting in the littoral zone

Lab work onboard

Lab work onboard

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

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

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Sorting in the lab

Sorting in the lab

Trawl catch

Trawl catch

RP-sledge in the sunset

RP-sledge in the sunset

Emptying the triangular dredge

Emptying the triangular dredge

Friday Photo: A beautiful feather duster worm!

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

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

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

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

Collecting around the island Sotra

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