Tag Archives: workshop

Final workshop for hyperbenthic copepods (HYPCOP)

Our first international workshop with from ltr; Anders Hobæk (NIVA), Cessa Rauch & Jon Kongsrud (UMB), Tone Falkenhaug (project leader, IMR), Alexandra Savchenko & Rony Huys (NHM), photo by Alexandra Savchenko

During the last week of September, HYPCOP organized its last and crucial workshop for finishing the project. We invited international collaborators Prof. Dr. Rony Huys and Dr. Alexandra Savchenko from the Natural History Museum in London. Prof. Dr. Huys is a well-known copepod taxonomist and crustacean researcher and published a multitude of species descriptions and books including key identification guides. We were very happy to hear he had time to come and travel to Bergen, paying us a visit while also helping us with species identifications of the many, many copepods we had collected during the two years of our project.

 

During the two years of the HYPCOP project we collected around 600 specimens from different localities all over Norway, including shallow coastal waters and the deeper parts of the mid-Atlantic Ridge (Loki’s Castle field of active hydrothermal vents). From all those specimens we extracted DNA from the soft tissue of the animal. Therefore, keeping the hard exoskeletons, for morphological identification downstream. This is the most time consuming and challenging part. The species can sometimes only be identified based on minuscule differences in the appearance of its legs. Besides, one needs good taxonomic competence to assign these differences to the thousands of marine benthic copepods species. And this is where the HYPCOP team needed help.

HYPCOP started in May 2020, when a lot of countries, including Norway, were in a lockdown and international travel was difficult or even impossible. Therefore, it was problematic for HYPCOP to invite international researchers for most of the time. Thus, we focused mostly on extracting DNA from our collected specimens and building up a barcode library. But what was missing was the nomenclature of the bulk of the specimens. When finally, our first international researchers could come and have a look at our specimens, it turned out to be an enormous task. With the help of Prof. Dr. Huys and Dr. Savchenko we managed now to have almost 300 assigned names to our DNA library of 500 specimens. Quite a few of those are new species and even new genera.

Kickoff of the workshop, which would take place at Marine Biological Station Espegrend for the duration of a week, photo by Alexandra Savchenko

Rony and Alexandra arrived Sunday evening in Bergen together with project leader Tone Falkenhaug and project technician Cessa. We were stationed at the Espegrend marine biological station in Bergen for the entirety of the week. It was for Tone and Cessa the first time they would finally meet Rony and Alexandra in person, after many months of digital communication. It was a nice relaxing first evening. The next day Anders Hobæk from NIVA and Jon Kongsrud from the UiB joined and we started off the week with a presentation overview of the project.

The overview informed everyone about the program of the week and the state of the art of the project. With the DNA barcode library, we managed to construct a COI phylogenetic tree. Some of the larger clades were already identified down to species level, but many more species names were missing from the smaller clades. It was up to us that week together with Rony and Alexandra to identify these last cases.

Alexandra onboard research vessel Emiliana, photo by Tone Falkenhaug

We also had one day of fieldwork planned, to have us work also with some fresh material. This we did with help of research vessel Emiliana and the Beyer’s sled. Both stationed at Espegrend Marine Biological station. We tried to pick out a nice and dry day for going out with the boat and that happened to be in the mid of the week. We went a little bit outside of the Biological Station, with a depth of around 90 – 120m. The Beyer’s sled is an epibenthic sampler, it is called a sled for its form. We got many fresh samples, but due the net being a little large in its mesh size, we did not get as many small species as we liked.

 

Therefore, we also tried another sampling method with help of Anders; he had brought with him a light trap. Light traps are very easy to DIY with a bottle and inverted bottle opening, like a funnel, and a small led light on the bottom. You install the trap in the water overnight; the little led light attracts a lot of small hyperbenthic and planktonic (and some bigger) species.

Everyone working hard at the Marine Biological Station Espegrend, assigning species names to specimens, photo by Cessa Rauch

The entirety of the week consisted of many hours working at the microscope, going through literature, dissecting specimens, and assigning species names to the specimens. Eventually with help of Rony and Alexandra, we managed to assign 298 scientific names to 702 specimens in our collection. From those specimens, we extracted DNA from 593 specimens and produced a DNA library, which we uploaded to the BOLDSYSTEMS (Barcode of Life Data System). This library also has all the metadata of our specimens, such as location, depth, size, and pictures of the specimens (either life, fixed and in some cases parts). And it will be publicly available at the end of the HYPCOP project.

The week was demanding but very rewarding and we got many specimens identified, with even a few new species and genera to Norway and possibly new to science; all thanks to the hard work and help of Rony and Alexandra. We therefore also would like to take this opportunity to thank them again for their time and efforts in helping the HYPCOP project move forward! Until next time.

Rony Huys and Alexandra Savchenko helping the HYPCOP project move forward, photo by Tone Falkenhaug

– Cessa

AmphipodThursday: IceAGE-amphipods in the Polish woods

img_2610This adventure started 26 years ago, when two Norwegian benthos researchers (Torleiv Brattegard from University of Bergen and Jon-Arne Sneli from the University in Trondheim) teamed up with three Icelandic benthos specialists (Jörundur Svavarsson and Guðmundur V. Helgasson from University of Iceland and Guðmundur Guðmundsson from the Natural History Museum of Iceland) to study the seas surrounding the volcanic home of the Nordic sages. 19 cruises and 13 years later – and not least lots of exciting scientific findings and results the BioICE program was finished.

But science never stops. New methods are developed and old methods are improved – and the samples that were stored in formalin during the BioICE project can not be used easily for any genetic studies. They are, however, very good for examinations of the morphology of the many invertebrate species that were collected, and they are still a source of much interesting science.

Participants of the IceAGE workshop. Photo: Christian Bomholt (www.instagram.com/mcb_pictures)

Participants of the IceAGE workshop. Photo: Christian Bomholt (www.instagram.com/mcb_pictures)

The dream about samples that could be DNA-barcoded (and possibly examined further with molecular methods) lead to a new project being formed – IceAGE. A large inernational collaboration of scientists organised by researchers from the University of Hamburg (and still including researchers from both the University of Iceland and the University of Bergen) have been on two cruises (2011 and 2013) so far – and there is already lots of material to look at!


This week many of the researchers connected with the IceAGE project have gathered in Spała in Poland – at a researchstation in woods that are rumoured to be inhabited by bison and beavers (we didn´t see any, but we have seen the results of the beavers work). Some of us have discussed theories and technical stuff for the papers and reports that are to come from the project, and then there are “the coolest gang” – the amphipodologists. 10 scientists of this special “species” have gathered in two small labs in the field-station, and we have sorted and identified amphipods into the wee hours.

It is both fun and educational to work together. Everybody have their special families they like best, and little tricks to identify the difficult taxa, and so there is always somebody to ask when you don´t find out what you are looking at. Between the stories about amphipod-friends and old times we have friendly fights about who can eat the most chocolate, and we build dreams about the perfect amphipodologist holiday. Every now and then somebody will say “come look at this amazing amphipod I have under my scope now!” – we have all been treated to species we have never seen before, but maybe read about. We also have a box of those special amphipods – the “possibly a new species”- tubes. When there is a nice sample to examine, you might hear one of the amphipodologist hum a happy song, and when the sample is all amphipods but no legs or antennae (this can happen to samples stored in ethanol – they become brittle) you might hear frustrated “hrmpfing” before the chocolate is raided.

 

Isopodologists (Martina and Jörundur) visiting the amphipodologists... Photo: AH Tandberg

Isopodologists (Martina and Jörundur) visiting the amphipodologists… Photo: AH Tandberg

The samples from IceAGE are all stored in ethanol. This is done to preserve the DNA for molecular studies – studies that can give us new and exciting results to questions we have thought about for a long time, and to questions we maybe didn´t even know we needed asking. We can test if what looks like the same species really is the same species, and we can find out more about the biogeography of the different species and communities.

The geographical area covered by IceAGE borders to the geographical area covered by NorAmph and NorBOL, and it makes great sense to collaborate. This summer we will start with comparing DNA-barcodes of amphipods from the family Eusiridae from IceAGE and NorAmph. They are as good a starting-point as any, and they are beautiful (Eusirus holmii was described in the norwegian blog last summer).


Happy easter from all the amphiods and amphipodologists!

Anne Helene

Literature:

Brix S (2014) The IceAGE project – a follow up of BIOICE. Polish Polar Research 35, 1-10

Dauvin J−C, Alizier S, Weppe A, Guðmundsson G (2012) Diversity and zoogeography of Ice−
landic deep−sea Ampeliscidae (Crustacea: Amphipoda). Deep Sea Research Part I: 68: 12–23.

Svavarsson J (1994) Rannsóknir á hryggleysingjum botns umhverfis Ísland. Íslendingar og hafiđ.
Vísindafélag Íslendinga, Ráđstefnurit 4: 59–74.
Svavarsson J, Strömberg J−O,  Brattegard T (1993) The deep−sea asellote (Isopoda,
Crustacea) fauna of the Northern Seas: species composition, distributional patterns and origin. Journal of Biogeography 20: 537–555.

Amphipod-Thursday. WoRMS – (all) about amphipods

It is a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless. Most biologists are not taxonomists. Even so – the work many biologists do is based on knowing the species studied, and knowing the correct name is part of that important knowledge.

Screenshot from WoRMS-search: Andaniopsis lupus

Screenshot from WoRMS-search: Andaniopsis lupus

But how do we know what names are valid, and what species have been formally described within a group? Taxonomic revisions tend to have name-changes as a result, and new species are described all the time – for amphipods an average of 140 species new to science are described yearly…

Screenshot from World Amphipoda Database

Screenshot from World Amphipoda Database

This is where databases will be your best friend! For marine species, the World Record of Marine Species, WoRMS, database is used widely, with more than 200 000 visits every month. Here you can find not only current accepted names, but also information about synonymised names, taxonomic literature, and for some species information about distribution, ecological traits and links to other resources. The data have all been checked and edited by a world-wide team of taxonomic and thematic editors – all responsible for their special groups of organisms.


IMG_9037This week, 22 of the 34 taxonomic editors of the World Amphipoda Database, feeding WoRMS with all Amphipod-related information, gathered at the Flanders Marine Institute in Oostende, Belgium to learn about how to best edit the information about Amphipods. It was two days full of information about the database, but also of hands-on training and with the help of the nice people in the Data Management Team of WoRMS, we managed to get quite a lot of information added and edited on the database. Needless to say, with more than 9000 amphipod species accepted (and several of them with earlier names or alternate representations), we have not completely finished yet. The work on editing a database is continuous – and we have plans for adding more info for each species, including type-information, ecological information and links to identification keys.


The second best thing about going to workshops (the first being all the exciting new things we learn), is that we get to spend time with colleagues from far away. The people working on amphipods are in many ways my extended family – this is at least how it feels whenever we meet. News about both amphipods and life in general are exchanged, possible new projects are planned, and friendships continue to be reinforced over cups of coffee, early breakfasts and late dinners. And every time we leave each other, there is a hope that our next meeting might not be too far away.  My colleagues from Poland call this “the Amphipoda way of life”  – and this friendly, collaborate life is a good life to have as a researcher.

AHT_8164

Participants at the workshop. Photo: AHS Tandberg (with help from ? at VLIZ)

Anne Helene

Citations:

Horton, T.; Lowry, J.; De Broyer, C.; Bellan-Santini, D.; Coleman, C. O.; Daneliya, M.; Dauvin, J-C.; Fišer, C.; Gasca, R.; Grabowski, M.; Guerra-García, J. M.; Hendrycks, E.; Holsinger, J.; Hughes, L.; Jaume, D.; Jazdzewski, K.; Just, J.; Kamaltynov, R. M.; Kim, Y.-H.; King, R.; Krapp-Schickel, T.; LeCroy, S.; Lörz, A.-N.; Senna, A. R.; Serejo, C.; Sket, B.; Tandberg, A.H.; Thomas, J.; Thurston, M.; Vader, W.; Väinölä, R.; Vonk, R.; White, K.; Zeidler, W. (2016) World Amphipoda Database. Accessed at http://www.marinespecies.org/amphipoda on 2016-04-07

WoRMS-info on workshop: http://www.marinespecies.org/news.php?p=show&id=4531

Workshop aftermath

IMGP0475The lab is rather quiet today, compared with the frantic activity of last week – but there’s still plenty of work to do! We’ll catalog the identified material – several hundred entries – into our museum collections.

For NorBOL, a total of 250 polychaete specimens from 154 different species were selected for genetic barcoding, that’s pretty impressive! In addition, some of our participants selected material to loan with them, these will also in part become NorBOL-barcodes.

Samples, samples everywhere

Samples, samples everywhere

 

 

 

 

 

IMGP0468We’ll process these as quickly as we can, taking pictures, filling in the forms and taking tissue samples for analysis at the CCDB lab in Canada – fingers crossed for a high success rate on the sequencing!

Preparing drawings using a camera lucida on the stereo microscope

Preparing drawings using a camera lucida on the stereo microscope

 

As mentioned previously we focused on the MAREANO-material, but supplemented with other samples – including those that we have collected ourselves. That meant that beauties like this one (picture below) could be examined in detail by an expert, and get properly identified before we send it off to become part of the BOLD-database.

Previously Euchone sp, now we have it identified as Euchone analis

Previously Euchone sp, now we have it identified as Euchone analis

Thank you to all our participants for a very productive and fun week!

Bioskag Workshop

We began the year with arranging two workshops in January. The first of these was based on the extensive sampling done in the Skagerrak strait in recent years (2006 – today). The aim was to increase the rather poor knowledge of the invertebrate fauna of the region (link is in Norwegian).

The focal group of this workshop was the Polychaetes (bristle worms), and through the effort of the ten attendants, a lot of material was examined. You can read more about this at the blog of the Norwegian Polychaete Forum.

Busy lab

We are currently processing the findings from the workshop, including documenting specimens through photography and drawing. One of the tools we employ for doing this is the scanning electron microscope (SEM), which enables us to make high resolution images at a very high magnification.

A SEM image of a a Sphaerodoridae. Photo: K. Kongshavn

A high magnification close-up of a Polychaete bristle. Photo: K. Kongshavn