There are periods when you wait quietly for good news to knock. Then there are those rare, wonderful times when great news shows up in twos. We are excited to announce that the Manet Team at the Department of Natural History has been granted not one, but two new projects: CHANGEZ – Challenging taxa of gelatinous zooplankton, and ODIN – Octocoral diversity in Norway.
The projects are funded by Artsdatabanken, the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre. As you know, Artsdatabanken projects (aka artsprosjekter) aim to improve knowledge of the diversity and distribution of poorly known groups. This is precisely the case for octocorals, as well as many jellyfish and ctenophores in Norwegian waters. Among others, Artsprosjekter aim to produce new DNA barcodes that will allow for an effective species monitoring.
Octocorals (sea fans, sea pens, and soft corals) are important habitat formers, providing substrate and nursery grounds for many species. They are also important indicators for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems. Despite their importance, our knowledge of octocoral true diversity and distribution in Norwegian waters remains scarce. Project ODIN (Project leader: Joan J. Soto-Angel) aims to fill this gap in the knowledge by applying a synergetic combination of imaging and sequencing tools.
The diversity of certain jellies (such as trachylines, siphonophores, coronates and ctenophores (aka comb jellies) in Norwegian waters remains inadequately explored. These gelatinous animals are key predators and ubiquitous members of zooplankton, particularly in oceanic waters. However, their fragile bodies and peculiar genetic makeup make them challenging to sample, identify, and DNA sequence. CHANGEZ (Project leader: Aino Hosia) will use the power of next generation sequencing techniques to unveil their hidden diversity.
We are very excited about the years to come, the questions we will be able to answer through these projects, and the prospects for continuing our work on such fascinating groups of marine invertebrates.
Joan J. Soto-Angel, Manet Team
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