We had visitor researcher Maël Grosse visiting the lab earlier this winter. Right here’s a weblog publish from his keep:
As a part of my just lately began Artsdatabanken undertaking, I’ve simply accomplished a month lengthy go to right here on the invertebrates collections. It was numerous work, but in addition rather a lot enjoyable. Everybody was very useful, offering me with worms to determine (a actually by no means ending provide!), serving to me with the scanning electron microscope and spending hours discussing worms and taxonomy.
My undertaking goals to check and map the range of a big household of polychaetes: Cirratulidae. Cirratulids are notoriously tough to determine, having few characters to work with hidden between the mass of tentacles and branchiae they drag round (Fig. 1). They’re fairly frequent and numerous, however poorly recognized, which is what I’m aiming to repair.
Fig. 1. A SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) picture of a Cirratulid made on the ELMI lab in Bergen. Picture: Katrine Kongshavn
Bergen Museum has the biggest assortment of polychaetes in Norway, with samples starting from the North Sea to the Arctic waters of Svalbard, and from the intertidal coastal waters to the abyssal depths of the North-East Atlantic. And certainly, hundreds of cirratulid polychaetes have been ready on the cabinets to be recognized. As it’s the setting I had been working essentially the most with previously couple of years, for this go to I made a decision to give attention to deep sea species. This led me to examine samples from everywhere in the Norwegian Sea, together with some distinctive and thrilling environments such because the depths of Sognefjord or hydrothermal vents.
On the finish of the month, over 5500 specimens, belonging to about 23 species have been examined (Fig. 2). Whereas the bulk may very well be given an identify or a species quantity (within the case of as of but unnamed species), many couldn’t be recognized with confidence, as a result of they have been incomplete specimens or from an space the place a selected species had not been recorded earlier than. There have been even two species I believe I had by no means seen earlier than, which is an excellent consequence for the undertaking! In that case, I chosen specimens for DNA barcoding, which is able to assist confirming their identification. I’ve picked out about 300 specimens for barcoding, so now there’s fairly a bit of labor to do again in my residence lab to sequence all of them.
Fig. 2. Cirratulidae samples at UMB. Picture: Maël Grosse
So ultimately, I’d say it was very productive go to, and I’ll definitely be again for extra worms!
-Maël Grosse