Category Archives: MAREANO

Door #10: Old Stoneface

Today’s critter is a Lithodes maja, or Northern stone crab (Trollkrabbe in Norwegian). They live in depths between 80-500 meters, where they feed on algae, bottom dwelling animals, and of scavenging. They are much smaller than their relatives the King crab (Paralithdodes camtschaticus), reaching up to 150 mm across the carapace.

Despite the name, they are not true crabs – Brachyura, but rather Anomurans: “As decapods (meaning ten-legged), anomurans have ten pereiopods (legs), but the last pair of these is reduced in size, and often hidden inside the gill chamber (under the carapace) to be used for cleaning the gills. Since this arrangement is very rare in true crabs (for example, the small family Hexapodidae), a “crab” with only eight visible pereiopods is generally an anomuran.” (Wikipedia)

Hello, there! Shake hands? Photo: H. Hektoen

Martin encountered this one when participating on this year’s final MAREANO survey in the Barents Sea. MAREANO has been working on mapping the depth and topography, sediment composition, contaminants, biotopes and habitats through a combination of video stations and physical sampling of sediments and animals in Norwegian waters since 2006.

A cruise typically lasts between 10 and 20 days, and for most years MAREANO has had 2-3 cruises. The amount of stations and collected material is staggering!

The pile of samples halfway through the cruise Photo: M. Hektoen

A bucket of beam trawl collected material – sponges and Munida (squat lobsters) are dominant, together with our friend from the picture above. Photo: M. Hektoen

Below is a map over the “full stations”, the stations that also include physical samples of biological material from grab, sled and trawl. These samples are split into fractions, some to be further processed by MAREANO, whilst others are bulk fixated without further analysis. The MAREANO-identified animals and unsorted fractions from these stations are deposited at the University Museum once MAREANO is done with them. We then continue to process them; decide which samples are significant, sort the unsorted fractions, implement material into the museum collections, and make it available for further research. For the interactive maps, go here.

Screenshot from mareano.no showing the bottom stations per year.

-Martin & Katrine

The 14th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium

5 days
~200 talks
~240 posters
35 nationalities
360 enthusiastic participants
Immeasurable cups of coffee & lots of pastries

The 14th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium was arranged in Aveiro, Portugal between 31st of August and 4th of September, and these happy people were amongst the participants.

The Norwegian University/museum entourage came from the Biological Institute (9), the University Museum (4), and the NTNU University Museum (1).

The topics of the conference was divided into seven main themes:

Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
Advances in taxonomy and phylogeny
Autoecology
Connectivity and biogeography
Evolutionary history and fossil records
Natural and anthropogenic disturbance
Stewardship of our deep oceans (DOSI)

(more details about the themes can be found here)

Our contributions ranged from sponges to fish, and included both talks and posters.

In no particular order (UM people in bold):

Talks:

Eilertsen MH, Kongsrud JA, Rapp HT – Evolutionary history of Ampharetinae (Ampharetidae, Annelida) adapted to chemosynthetic ecosystems

Hestetun JT, Vacelet J, Boury-Esnault N et al – Phylogenetic relationships of carnivorous sponges

Rees DJ, Byrkjedal I, Sutton TT – Pruning the pearlsides: reconciling morphology and molecules in mesopelagic fishes (Maurolicus: Sternoptychidae)

Bakken T, Oug E, Kongsrud JA, Alvestad T, Kongshavn, K – Polychaetous annelids in the deep Nordic Seas: strong bathymetric gradients, low deep-sea diversity and underdeveloped taxonomy

Xavier JR, Marco J, Rapp HT, Davies AJ – Predicting suitable habitat for the bird’s nest sponge Pheronema carpenteri (Porifera, Hexactinellida) in the Northeast Atlantic

Posters:

Kongshavn K, Kongsrud JA, Tandberg AHS, Alvestad, T, Bakken, T, Oug, E, Willassen E – Intergrating DNA-barcoding and morphology to study marine invertebrates – Exploring biodiversity and biogeography of deep-sea polychaetes in the Norwegian Sea

Hestetun JT, Xavier JR, Rapp HT – Carnivorous sponges from the Southwestern Indian Ocean Ridge seamounts

Alvizu A, Tendal OS, Rapp HT – Deep-water calcareous sponges (Calcarea: Porifera) from the Norwegian, Greenland and Iceland Seas (GIN) – from abyssal plains to mid-ocean ridges and hydrothermal vents

(Xavier JR), Pereira R, Gomes Pereira JN, Tempera F et al – Sponge assemblages of the Condor seamount (Azores) characterized from underwater imagery

Olsen BR, Troedsson C, Hadziavdic K et al – The influence of hydrothermal fluids on pelagic eukaryotic microorganism diversity and subsequent prey selection in a pelagic amphipod in the Nordic Seas

In addition to these direct contributions, it was very gratifying to see our friends and colleagues presents results that were in part based on University Museum assistance, whether through participation on cruises with us, loans of material, visits to the Museum collections or data made available. Quite a few of our photos also found their way into presentations, which is always fun!

It was a busy week with a lot of information to absorb and a lot of old and new acquaintances and friends to talk to. We used this opportunity to spread the word about our current projects, and especially to discuss the challenges and potential of barcoding marine invertebrates.

We are very grateful to the organizing committee for taking on the herculean task of setting up such a wonderful symposium!

Obrigada/o!

Photo by @tangerina_ (Twitter)

A new polychaete species!

Meet Ampharete undecima, a new species of polychaete (bristle worm) that we recently described:

One of the tools used when describing a new species is the electron microscope, which allows us to take very detailed photographs of the animals. Photo: K. Kongshavn

The sites where the species has been found

The species has been decribed based on material collected by the University of Bergen in the Nordic Seas in the 80s, and from samples collected by MAREANO in more recent years. It occurs in deep waters between 600 and 1650 meters depth, and has a broad distribution. The type specimen of the species is from a location that MAREANO sampled in 2009.

Alvestad T., Kongsrud J.A., and Kongshavn , K. (2014) Ampharete undecima, a new deep-sea ampharetid (Annelida, Polychaeta) from the Norwegian Sea . Memoirs of Museum Victoria 71:11-19 Open Access.

Workshop aftermath

The 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

We’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

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

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

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).

The making of plans

Working hard

The Polychaete pack gathered

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.

Odontosyllis sp

A Paranaitis wahlbergi

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.

10(!) new plates ready for BOLD

We’re currently in the final stages of preparing ten plates; 9 from Norwegian waters for the Norwegian Barcode of Life project (NorBOL), and one plate of Polychaetes from the Marine Biodiversity of Western Africa (MIWA) project for submission to the BOLD database.

The shipment will consist of the following taxa groups:

1…

2….

3….

…4 plates of polychaetes (bristle worms) from Norwegian waters. These have mainly been collected by the large projects MAREANO, BIOSKAG and PolySkag, and have been identified during workshops that we have arranged.

One plate of aplacophoran molluscs

One plate of ophiouroids (brittle stars), mainly from MAREANO and BIOSKAG

One plate of ophiuroids (brittle stars), mainly from MAREANO and BIOSKAG

One plate of Amphipoda, mostly collected by MAREANO, but also samples collected during a teaching cruise from UNIS at Svalbard

One complete plate of Cumaceans…

..and one plate with Cumacea (bottom right), Mysida (bottom left) and Isopoda (top)

As well as one plate of African polychaetes.

Hopefully the sequencing will be successfull, and yield many new DNA barcodes!

PolyNor Workshop on the MAREANO material

This week our lab is teeming with activity as twelve researchers goes to work on our polychaete material, focusing mainly on that which has been collected by the MAREANO program.

Worm work in progress!
Photos by Andy Mackie (SEM photograph by K. Kongshavn)

As mentioned previously, the material collected by MAREANO gets split into size based fractions, which then receive different treatments. As far as the polychaetes go, MAREANO carries out routine identification on what is collected by grab (1 mm) and beam trawl (5 mm), all of which has been fixed in formalin (until this year, where it was begun fixing half of the beam trawl in ethanol). Thus we already have some idea of what to expect to find in the material.

At the Invertebrate Collections we have processed a lot of bulk samples from the fractions that MAREANO does not utilize, and lately we have especially focused on the Ethanol fixed material, as this can be used for genetic work.

This workshop is part of the Polychaete diversity in the Norwegian sea (PolyNor) project. This project aim to explore the diversity of polychaetes in the Nordic seas;

The Norwegian Sea holds a diverse fauna of polychaete worms, more diverse than previously anticipated. Recent work has discovered several new species and species described in the old literature but not seen since their description, has been rediscovered. Material from new samples will be targeted to discover the true diversity of polychaetes in the Norwegian Sea.

During the workshop we will work on some of the groups with especially tricky taxonomy, prioritizing the identifying of specimens fixed in ethanol, and select individuals that are especially suited for genetic work. And of course we will also discuss current topics, find and reconnect with collaborators, drink an unholy amount of coffee, and learn some new things!

Home, sweet home

I came across these two bristle worms from the genus Nothria whilst sorting out the animals from a sample collected in the Barents sea by the MAREANO project, and wanted to show you how differently they’ve approached the choice of building materials for their tubes. They build the tube around their bodies to protect themselves from predators. Now, a Nothria outside its “house”, or tube, looks like this (scale bar is 2 mm) :

Nothria out of tube

The same animal inside its tube looked like this:

Typical tube, built out of sand grains and small rocks

And then there was this one, who had made a more select choice of building materials:

Fancy edition; built using empty bivalve shells

Fall cruise with MAREANO

R/V G.O. Sars

I’m onboard the research vessel “G.O. Sars”, participating in the last MAREANO cruise of the year. We’re currently on our way back out to the sampling sites after seeking refuge in a fjord from the storm yesterday.

Sampling areas. The yellow area is finished, the brown ones are work in progress. From mareano.no

The area we’re working on is outside Møre & Romsdal, currently we’re on our way to a set of video stations whilst we wait for the sea swell to die down (it’s quite the rollercoaster here at the moment!). We have two-three full stations remaining, hopefully we’ll be able to finish those as well before the cruise ends this Friday.

Campod. It has one main HD camera, and two additional cameras to aid in the handling of it.

“Full station” means that we in addition to videoing the sea floor for a 700m long transect with our remotely controlled video rig, the Campod 2, also collect physical samples.

From the video room (the smallest room onboard, and the most crowded!)

This is done using a variety of gears, which collectively gives us a extensive insight in the properties of the area we’re working on. On board we have a team of biologists, geologists and a chemist. The geologists and chemist are after sediment cores, which provide a window back in time for analyses of the physical and chemical parameters of the sea floor, including the accumulation of pollution. How far back a core extends will depend on the sedimentation rate, and on how long the core we manage to extract is.

Multicorer in action

The multicorer collects six sediments cores in one go

For collecting animals, we are using three main gears: the epibenthic RP-sled, the beam trawl, and the grab. These collect different parts of the fauna, and (together with the video) gives us a fair understanding of the species diversity and composition.

The grab (a van veen) collects a quantifiable amount of animals exceeding 1 mm in size. We take two grabs at each full station.

The grab (a van veen) collects a quantifiable amount of animals exceeding 1 mm in size living in the sediment. We collect two grabs at each full station.

Incoming grab

A typical grab sample. We carefully rinse the mud through a 1 mm sieve, collecting the animals within it.

The noble art of playing with mud and water

RP sled (left) and the beam trawl. The sled collects the small animals living just above and in the upper layer of sediment. The beam trawl collects the macro- and megafauna living above and within the top layer of the bottom.

Beam trawl catch: various starfish

Beam trwal catch: sea cucumbers (Stichopus)

Beam trawl catch: sea cucumbers (Stichopus)

Rough!

Calm

We’ve had some glorious sunrises whilst working on deck

Fulmars and gulls are alos following us, hoping we'll give up on the small animals and start catching fish for them

Fulmars and gulls are following us, hoping we’ll give up on the small animals and start catching fish for them

Three gannets are also trailing us, they’ve been around since we left Kristiansund. Gorgeous birds!

Now we’ve arrived at the next station, so I’d better get going!

The 11th International Polychaete Conference – Sydney, Australia 2013

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 Invertebrate Collections

The University Museum of Bergen