Norway | The Invertebrate Collections

Fresh off the press:

“Diversity of Orbiniella (Orbiniidae, Annelida) in the North Atlantic and the Arctic“,
published in ZooKeys. DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1205.120300 (link goes to paper, it is Open Access)

In this recent publication, PhD candidate Miguel and his co-authors present three new species of marine bristle worms (polychaeta) in the family Orbiniidae, all from the genus Orbiniella.
The work focused on studying the diversity of the group from the North Atlantic and the Arctic, and has used a combination of molecular and morphological analyses.

The new species have been named Orbiniella parapari, Orbiniella griegi, and Orbiniella mayhemi. The choice of names (etymology) goes as follows:

O. parapari: This species is dedicated to the Spanish polychaetologist Dr. Julio Parapar, who described the first Orbiniella species in the North Atlantic waters, Orbiniella petersenae Parapar, Moreira & Helgason, 2015.
O. griegi: This species is named in honour of Edvard Grieg, the Norwegian musician born and raised in Bergen, the city where the present study was conducted.
O. mayhemi: The species is named in honour to the Norwegian Black Metal band from Oslo, Mayhem, one of the bands that most contributed to the development of the Norwegian Black Metal in the 90-s. MAM was listening to their music to endure the darkest hours in the lab.

This may the first time classical composer Edvard Grieg and infamous black metal band Mayhem are presented as closely related?

A scientific illustration with B&W SEM images of a small worm

Figure 7 from the paper, showing details of Orbiniella mayhemi Meca & Budaeva, sp. nov. Image credit: Miguel A. Meca et al. 2024, CC BY 4.0

Citation: Meca MA, Kongsrud JA, Kongshavn K, Alvestad T, Meißner K, Budaeva N (2024) Diversity of Orbiniella (Orbiniidae, Annelida) in the North Atlantic and the Arctic. ZooKeys 1205: 51–88. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1205.120300 (link)

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.