HYPCOP workshop in Flødevigen | The Invertebrate Collections
From the seventh to the eleventh of March the HYPCOP staff as soon as extra sat collectively to work on the identification of the species we now have within the assortment. The technique was related as we had in Bergen final yr, however this time we appeared focus into particular clades. In addition to, we met in Flødevigen this time, as an alternative of Bergen, and visited Tone Falkenhaug at her jobsite with the Norwegian Institute of Marine Analysis (IMR, Havforskningsinstituttet).
The HYPCOP staff in Flødevigen, from ltr; Cessa Rauch (UiB), Jon Kongsrud (UiB), Anders Hobæk (NIWA) & mission chief Tone Falkenhaug (IMR).
A method for figuring out species of hyperbenthic copepods is by their colours. Sadly, these get misplaced as quickly as you fixate the samples in technical ethanol. Subsequently, we began the workshop with a brief sampling journey simply out of the bay in entrance of the analysis station. We took a small boat from the analysis station that had a handbook operated hinge on the again of the boat, so we may use that for pulling up the seize.
Getting ready the small IMR boat with use of the handbook hinge and the seize.
Anders Hobæk working the seize
One of many benefits of working with tiny animals is that you just typically solely want small gear to gather them. The seize we used is hand measurement seize, not a lot larger than a 10L basket.
Nevertheless, as it’s made completely out of metallic it’s nonetheless heavy, which ensures it is going to be in a position to “seize” the mud from the underside when it hits the ocean flooring.
As soon as we arrived at a pleasant location with the boat, we positioned the seize over the sting of the boat and let it sink to the underside which was about 40m deep.
As soon as the seize would landing it will shut and engulf softbottom materials together with the animals which are related to it. The closed seize could be city again with the handbook hinge from the boat. As soon as onboard, we’d empty the grabs content material in a bucket and sieve among the materials. This materials would return to the lab for examination.
We rigorously examined the sediment, and it was not but very wealthy with benthos. We caught a couple of fascinating copepods species, that we documented and fixated for identification.
One of many species we caught with the seize
March just isn’t the very best season for benthic copepod sampling, the water remains to be very chilly from the winter and many of the small algae must develop again. Benthic copepods are far more ample with rising temperatures and many algae progress. Again within the laboratory we began engaged on our museum assortment copepods and assigned clades in our household tree that we’d look at first.
Tone Folkenhaug (left) and Anders Hobæk (proper) concentrated with dissecting copepods.
Larger clades had extra precedence, and so we took these samples and checked the person specimens. All of the specimens we had in our assortment are exoskeleton remnants from the DNA extraction (therefore we may have a phylogenetic tree). The exoskeletons are nonetheless good for morphology identification however onerous to see (on account of there translucent nature). Subsequently, to assist with the identification we’d usually stain the exoskeletons both with lactophyl blue or lignin pink, which resulted in a visually pleasing assortment of ready slides of various colours.
Slides of Lactophyl and lignin pink stained copepods
Due to the workshop we now have handle to establish 145 out the 580 specimens; our efforts for figuring out will proceed and a brand new workshop is already deliberate, we meet once more in June and in September, with additionally this time, assist of worldwide researchers!
Keep tuned with @planetcopepod!
-Cessa