We are currently on the lookout for students interested in doing their Master thesis with us.
If you are interested in learning more, you can look here for some examples of possible topics within polychaetes or marine molluscs.
We’re also interested in students that might want to work with decapods, such as the African crab fauna.
Contact us if you are interested!
Diopatra project – check link for details
From the mid-conference excursion to the Royal National Park. Photo by Katrine
For a hectic week in early August, the Australian Museum in Sydney was swarmed by enthusiastic people in purple hoodies, who kept talking about (bristle) worms.
It was the 11th International Polychaete Conference, with 149 attendants from 26 different countries. We had a strong Norwegian presence there – from the Museum, three of us attended (with talks and posters), as well collaborators of ours from NTNU, NIVA, and Uni Environment.
You can read more about our contributions here (if your Norwegian is up to speed – unfortunately it is not avaliable in English).
Group photo (courtesy of the IPC 2013 committee)
The conference venue, the Australian Museum
From the auditorium
It was a great week, where we got to meet and mingle with our colleagues from all over the world, learning what they are working on and how, making new connections and meeting up with old friends.
We had a excellent time, and would like to thank the IPC 2013 committee for the fantastic job they did!
The next conference will be in Cardiff, Wales in 2016, we look forward to it.
The World Congress of Malacology is the major scientific international meeting in the field of malacology (the study of molluscs) and takes place every third year.
Five of six delegates from the University Museum of Bergen. From left to right: Trond Oskars, Andrea Zamora, Christiane Todt, Manuel Malaquias, Lena Ohnheiser
This year the event was hosted by the University of the Azores in the island of São Miguel between the 21 and 28 of July. Over 400 enthusiastic scientists from all over the World gathered in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to discuss during five days the latest advances in this science covering various aspects of phylogenetics, biodiversity, ecology, palaeontology, conservation, pest management, adaptations to extreme environments, biogeography, speciation, etc.
Trond Oskars (master student) presenting part of his master thesis on the systematics of cephalaspidean gastropods at the Opisthobranchs Symposium
A delegation from the University Museum comprised by six scientists and students have participated in the event, namely Christiane Todt (post-doctoral researcher), Lena Ohnheiser (research assistant), Andrea Zamora (PhD candidate), Nina Mikkelsen (PhD candidate), Trond Oskars (MSc. student), and Manuel Malaquias (assistant professor). In total, members of the University Museum were co-authors in 14 scientific contributions: four posters and 10 talks presented at the Aculifera and Opisthobranchs symposiums.
The next congress will take place in Penang, Malaysia in 2016 and we look forward for it!
The spectacular volcanic “Lagoa do Fogo” in São Miguel Island, Azores
..is conference time!
Preparing talks
Most of our department are currently either attending The World Congress of Malacology, or are busy preparing for The 11th International Polychaete Conference.
The blog is therefore entering a bit of a summer holiday, though there may be some glipses of conference life coming.
We’re spending the first two weeks of July out on our marine field station, running a workshop with participants from nine different countries on material from Western Africa. You can read more about this on our project blog: Marine Invertebrates of Western Africa
The Horniman Museum and Gardens
Curating a natural history collection comes with many challenges; how do you “freeze” the specimen in such a state that another taxonomist can request to examine it in 10 (20, 30, 50, 100…) years from now, and expect to find the same characters (the traits that are used for determining which species one is looking at) as the one who originally described or determined the specimen?
Which fluid should then be used as a preservative? Here we nee to take into consideration such features as potential harmfulness, fire hazards, longviety, the possible effects on histology and DNA, resistance to pests, effects on the container it is kept in, etc. etc. And how should the samples be stored? How do you rescue objects that have been damaged?
I spent most of last week attending a course in methods for fixing and preserving natural history specimens in fluid; The «Fluid Preservation Course» was given by Simon Moore at The Horniman Museum in London.
The group
Some of the topics covered included
Making a display part 1: One lizard in a bag. Extract from bag, figure out which preservative has been used, transfer to suitable new preservative.
Making a display part 2: prepare speciemen for being mounted in a suitable jar
Making a display part 2b: Stitch monofilament in to lizard to mount it on a custom made piece of glass in the jar (it looks rather brutal, doesn’t it?)
Making a display part 3: Ta-da!
A jar stuffed full of turtles and tortoises in really bad condition – we tried to salvage as much as possible, especially one specimen that was of a species they didn’t have in the museum collection.
Still not in great condition, but at least we can see what’s in the jar now!
Working with glass
Using vaccuum to extract air from dried-out specimens
Dessicated sea horses en route to rehydration
Injecting alcohol in dessiccated specimens to help them rehydrate (and sink).
A fairly messy jar with spiders (with varying numbers of legs still attached) and a tick
The spiders have been mounted on monofilament, the missing legs have been re-attached using class needles and colloidin as glue, the jar has been replaced, and they are now stored in 80% alcohol.
Work in progress
We recently had two taxonomists working of the sponges (Porifera) that MAREANO has collected. They picked out specimens that are of particular interest for their own research, and did a (partial) revision on the rest of the material.
Many samples
Sorted and labeled
A sand flat lined by mangroves; Eulethera I., The Bahamas
Recent research has showed that something is going on in the Bahamas! Even when specimens from these islands look pretty much alike its “con-specifics” from other parts of the Caribbean region, they show considerable genetic divergence. Likely ecological and/or oceanographic processes are limiting gene-flow between the Bahamas and nearby islands accelerating the rate of speciation.
Rocky shore; Eulethera I., The Bahamas
At the University Museum we want to understand the “entrails” of these processes and therefore we headed to sunny Bahamas for a two-weeks fieldtrip in Eulethera I. Seventeen specimens of opisthobranchs gastropods have been collected and two populations of our model-species, the cephalaspidean Bulla occidentalis, were found inside closed ponds lined by mangroves and limestone. These ponds are very special habitats completely enclosed and only communicating with the ocean by submarine outlets or through the porosity of the limestone rock and can be considered “islands inside islands”.
Turtle Pond; Eulethera I., The Bahamas
DNA will be soon extracted from specimens of the two populations of Bulla occidentalis and compared with that of other populations throughout the tropical West Atlantic from Brazil to Bermuda. This will help understanding processes of historical biogeography and speciation in the highly complex Caribbean region.
Black morph of Bulla occidentals; Eulethera I., The Bahamas
The nudibranch Phidiana lynceus; Eulethera I., The Bahamas
The aglajid Chelidonura normani; Eulethera I., The Bahamas
The aglajid Chelidonura hirundinina; Eulethera I., The Bahamas
The sacoglossan Ascobulla ulla; Eulethera I., The Bahamas
A brittle star, Ophiura ophiura (scale bar is 0.5cm)
In addition to the crabs (Brachyura) discussed in the previous post, we are also focusing on animal groups such as the brittle stars (Ophiuroidea) and bristle worms (Polychaeta).
Currently we are preparing samples for genetic barcoding though the BOLD system.
Here are a couple of photographs of the animals that have been through the mill of identification – photo documentation – tissue sampling this week.
A bristle worm from the family Maldanidae, partially encased in the tube that the animal dwells in (scale bar is 0.5 cm)
Another and rather different looking bristle worm, this time from the family Onuphidae. Scale bar is 0.5 cm
R/V Dr Fridtjof Nansen sampling stations for which benthic samples have been deposited in the Invertebrate Collections of Bergen. Red dots: the Canary Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME). Yellow dots: the Guinea Current Large Marine Ecosystem (GCLME)
Since 2005 the research vessel R/V Dr Fridtjof Nansen has been sampling benthic invertebrates on the continental shelf of the large marine ecosystems (GCLME and CCLME) of West Africa. A large bulk of the material is kept in our collection and is being processed for taxonomic and other studies by several workers.
These days we are particularly focusing on the true crabs (Brachyura) and are preparing specimens for DNA barcoding with the BOLD system. This work will produce open access data (genetics, morphology, distribution) to enhance a broader knowledge about Atlantic marine biodiversity. The project is financially supported by JRS Biodiversity Foundation.
Cronius ruber (Lamarck, 1818) caught off Guinea at 35 m depth in May 2012. (Identification E.Willassen)
A small assembly of crabs photographed and prepared for DNA barcoding. Some specimens have still kept some colors despite being preserved in ethanol