Blog
June 1-3, the 19th Larwood Symposium was held at Tøyen Hovedgård here at the Natural History Museum in Oslo. About 40 bryozoologists (+ accompanying persons) from about 15 countries spread over five continents made the trip to Oslo!
The Larwood Symposium is a smaller conference about everything bryozoan, and is held every year between the larger, international meetings that are held every three years (International Bryozoology Association conferences). So having participants from so many places in the world at our “local” European symposium was simply fantastic!
Several of the people involved in the NorDigBryo project presented their work during this symposium.
Disporella hispida and Patinella verrucaria are bryozoans that both belong to the family Lichenoporidae. They belong to different genera, but are very similar to each other, and can be difficult to identify. Fortunately, there are some features that distinguish them, and this post will discuss some of them.
To identify these species, it is easiest to start with determining what genus you are dealing with. As previously mentioned, both species belong to the family Lichenoporidae. This family is characterized by (usually) round colonies with zooids that "radiate" from the center of the colony. The center of the colony is usually where the gonozooids develop (the brooding chamber). The ooeciostome (where the larvae are released) is species-specific and can be helpful when identifying Disporella hispida and Patinella verrucaria. There are also some empty spaces between the zooids, and these "holes" are called alveoli...
During the past year, I (Mali) have gone through a relatively large amount of unidentified bryozoan material that was collected in the 1950s. There are two different collection "projects": One with a focus on the Oslofjord (the Drøbak collections, image 1A) and the other along the coast of Southern Norway (the Dannevig collections, image 1B).
The Drøbak collection was managed from the marine biological station in Drøbak and led by Bjørn Føyn. The collection itself was carried ...
November is often a month where things are a bit dark and dreary, and there is generally little to look forward to, but luckily we had a workshop planned at Espegrend Marine Biological Station. The plan for the trip was to plan the final parts of the project, unravel DNA sequence mysteries, and go through exciting and relevant samples.
Regarding Callopora
If you collect bryozoans along the Norwegian coast, you can find species belonging to the genus Callopora. This genus has several species, but if you collect material from the sublittoral zone, there are usually two species that often appear together and that appear quite similar: Callopora lineata and Callopora craticula.
These species both have several spines distributed around the entire zooid, they have avicularia, and the zooids do not have that much calcification compared to some other cheilostomes. It can be a bit difficult to tell them apart, but if you have a good stereo microscope, there is a good chance you will be able to do it! Here I present four differences that can be used for separating the two species.
Hornera (the images to the left) and Stigmatoechos (the images to the right) are genera that can be difficult-ish to distinguish. Both form robust, erect colonies that have a distinct frontal and basal side.
July is a holiday month for many, and usually relaxation, swimming and enjoying the sun are on the agenda for a lot of people. But it is also a great opportunity to look for bryozoans!
Mali and Terese went on a trip to Nesoddtangen to visit Marinreparatørene. This is an organization that works to improve conditions in the Oslofjord, and is involved in many different activities!
One of the activities that Marinreparatørene ...
Early in May we had a wonderful visit from one of NorDigBryo's two master's students: Maria. Maria works with the difficult group Cyclostomatida, and relies on good electron microscopy images to be able to identify a lot of the species.
That's why we invited Maria here so that she could get a quick training in how to use our "small" tabletop electron microscope. Incidentally, I (Mali) have spent many, many hours here taking pictures of many bryozoan colonies through the past couple of years.
Since Maria was going to be here for a week, she had a lo...
During our workshop at Espegrend, we collected some colonies of Membranipora membranacea. And when they were exposed to slightly warmer water after being indoors for a little while, something cool happened!
The zooids started releasing lots of larvae (the little things that fly around in the video)! M. membranacea may not have brood chambers like some other cheilostomes, but all bryozoans have a larval stage.
Eventually the larvae will find a suitable place to settle down and thus a bryozoan colony starts. Well, after the larva undergoes a weird transformation to become the first zooid (ancestrula)!
Video by Maria B. Grankvist
Team NorDigBryo has just finished a one-week workshop at the marine station belonging to the University of Bergen. The field station is located at Espeland by the Raunefjord in scenic surroundings, and with good facilities for carrying out laboratory work. And there was definitely a lot of lab work involved!
Workshop + enthusiastic people = match made in heaven
We had invited the international bryozoan experts Joanne Porter and Paul Taylor to take part in the workshop, and they helped us a lot with identifying the bryozoans, but also contributed a lot of relevant information and facts about overall bryozoan taxonomy and other relevant subjects!
The rest of the team consisted of two master's students (Maria and Terese), a former master's student (Tine), the UiB group (Katrine and Jon), the NTNU group (Torkild and Aina) and the Oslo group (Mali and Lee Hsiang).
At the end of October, the first Norwegian Symposium in Biosystematics was organized in Oslo, and it was a great opportunity for us to present the NorDigBryo project to Norwegian researchers, students and others who work with biosystematics. We got to enjoy many great talks on everything from mysterious fungi, fungus-infected insects and seals!
Both Mali and Katrine (from the University Museum in Bergen) attended the symposium and each gave a talk. Mali spoke about NorDigBryo, while Katrine spoke about the GBIF organization and why you should share biodiversity data there!
One of the highlights of the year for the NorDigBryo project was the workshop at Sletvik field station 14-18 October. Here both students, technicians and researchers met to work with (and discuss) bryozoans! The Natural History Museum in Oslo, the University Museum in Bergen, the NTNU University Museum were all represented together with Joanne Porter, our international bryozoan expert from Heriot Watt University, Orkney Campus.
Sletvik is located along the coast of central Norway approx. an hour and a half from Trondheim by car, and is surrounded by beautiful natural surroundings!
Time for another update from the project! This time we have actually been on a trip to the southern part of Europe. NorDigByro (represented by Mali and Emanuela) attended the Larwood Symposium in the Lerici area located on the northwest coast of Italy! This symposium is a conference for people interested in and working with bryozoans. Such conferences are a great opportunity to get to know other bryozoologists and be updated on what is going on in the bryozoan world.
Earlier this week we had a relatively spontaneous mini-workshop here at the Natural History Museum in Oslo. We were visited by Jonas from the Institute of Marine Research! He is interested in identifying the most common bryozoans they come across when they are out in the field, and contacted us to see if there were any opportunities for collaboration!
There was indeed an opportunity for collaboration! The more people who know about bryozoans the better (not biased at all *coug...
Communicating science is an important component of the projects supported by Artsprosjektet (Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative), and one we as scientists enjoy – who doesn’t like to inform others about the cool things we study? That is basically what writing scientific papers is, after all!
But to communicate outside our niche audience of other scientists who have a deep background knowledge of our chosen organisms is to tell a different story. In writing, we can do so with the aid of images, like we do on our @NorDigBryo Instagram account – Mali’s excellent scanning electron images enable us to see details that are invisible to the naked eye.
...Om nom nom nom!
Did you know that some marine critters view bryozoans as a snack? Nudibranchs is a good example. They will search for bryozoan colonies and once they have found one, it is snack time!
An example is Onchidoris muricata, which is the round lump you see in the video. Here it enjoys a Membranipora membranacea colony.
Video: Mali Ramsfjell
Reference:
Bakken T, Evertsen J og Skauge C. Onchidoris muricata (O.F. Müller, 1776). www.artsdatabanken.no/Pages/313967. Downloaded <22/02/2024>
When part of your work consists of identifying organisms, you gradually learn which characters are important to know whether it is that species or another. This also applies to bryozoans, which have a number of features that are important for identification.
Here I will talk a little about which characters are often used when it comes to identifying bryozoans belonging to the order Cheilostomatida. There other features that you can use, but in order not to make this text infinitely long, I have limited it to contain the most common characters.
Shape and growth
The shape and growth form of a bryozoan colony are both important features to use when determining what kind of families/genera/species you are dealing with. For example, you have the family Bugulidae where you have species that form erect, often fragile and flexible colonies (Fig. 1). While in the family Escharellidae, you often find species where non-flexible colonies ...
The NorDigBryo project is now officially underway! Together with our partners in Bergen (The University Museum in Bergen) and Trondheim (NTNU University Museum), we will map bryozoan species that have been collected along the Norwegian coast!
The early stages of the project
So what has happened since we started up the project (which happened to be in April)? Well, we have borrowed bryozoan samples from the University Museum in Bergen (many thanks to Katrine and Jon!) for processing. Processing involves the sorting of material, identifying species and photographing the ones we find.
After going through the samples from Bergen, we have already received a rather long list of species that we have been able to identify, and many have been photographed with a scanning electron microscope. This makes species identification easier, since some of the characteristic features of the bryozoans can be so small that you actually need an electron micros...