Kevin Kocot 2014 Northern Hemisphere Tour

I'm still waiting on official approval from UQ's powers that be, but I will be visiting the U.S. and Germany this July-August.

July 9-15: Auburn (with a trip to NC for friends' wedding)
July 15-21: Friday Harbor Labs
July 21-31: Auburn
August 1-10: Berlin (for the International Conference of Invertebrate Morphology)
August 10-24: Auburn, St. Louis, and Destin, FL (for my sissie's wedding!). Details forthcoming...

My cup overflowith

One challenge I've faced in my project studying aculiferan biomineralization has been getting samples of aplacophorans suitable for RNA-based work. Often times, aplacs can be rare and I really need multiple specimens to have biological replicates for some of the experiments I plan to do. I had hoped to collect Epimenia here in Australia but so far that hasn't panned out. Fortunately, my wonderful collaborator and friend Dr. Christiane Todt was just on a cruise and collected tons of specimens of Stylomenia sulcodoryata and Chaetoderma nitidulum as well as one specimen each of Neomenia carinata and Scutopus ventrolineatus. Now I'm armed with plenty of material for traditional transcriptomes of mantle tissue a well as laser capture microdsisection and CEL-seq and in situ hybridization to look at gene expression in the cells secreting sclerites in these beasts as well as proteomic work looking at the protein component of the sclerites.

Stylomenia sulcodoryata
(source: http://www.artsdatabanken.no/Article/Article/398)

Chaetoderma
(source: http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/aplacophora/defchaetneo.html)

Pleurobrachia bachei (Ctenophora) genome published in Nature this week

No, it's not an aculiferan mollusc but I just had to post about this...

Our paper on the genome of the ctenophore Pleurobrachia bachei was published this week in Nature! I'm really proud to have had a part in this exciting work and I'm eager to see what the future holds for some of the unanswered questions and surprising findings made here and by the Mnemiopsis leidyi genome study.

 

Link to the paper itself at Nature

Link to News & Views write-up by Andy Hejnol

Proofs for Proneomenia custodiens sp. nov.!

Today Christiane Todt and I got our proofs for our upcoming paper (Todt and Kocot in press, Polish Polar Research) describing a new species of Proneomenia I collected during the 2011 IceAGE cruise that broods its babies in its butt!

Here's the abstract:
During August-September 2011, scientists aboard the R/V Meteor sampled marine animals around Iceland for the IceAGE project (Icelandic marine Animals: Genetics and Ecology). The last sample was taken at a site known as “The Rose Garden” off northeastern Iceland and yielded a large number of two species of Proneomenia (Mollusca, Aplacophora, Solenogastres, Cavibelonia, Proneomeniidae). We examined isolated sclerites, radulae, and histological section series for both species. The first, Proneomenia sluiteri Hubrecht, 1880, was originally described from the Barents Sea. This is the first record of this species in Icelandic waters. However, examination of aplacophoran lots collected during the earlier BIOICE campaign revealed additional Icelandic localities from which this species was collected previously. The second represents a new species of Proneomenia, which, unlike other known representatives of the genus, broods juveniles in the mantle cavity. We provide a formal description, proposing the name Proneomenia custodiens n. sp. Interestingly, the sclerites of brooded juveniles are scales like those found in the putatively plesiomorphic order Pholidoskepia rather than hollow needles like those of the adults of this species. Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) DNA barcode sequences are provided for both species of Proneomenia.

Proneomenia custodiens n. sp. A. Photograph of a brooding specimen in the process of expelling its offspring, presumably a stress response (photo by D. Fiege); scale bar: 0.8 mm. B. Microphotography of one juvenile (photo by M. Błażewicz-Paszkowycz); scale bar: 100 µm. C. Histological cross-section through the mantle cavity (mc) of the holotype brooding juveniles (asterisks); one juvenile is situated in the mantle cavity opening (arrow); scale bar: 500 µm. D. Cross-section of a juvenile from within the mantle cavity of the holotype, showing the cerebral ganglion (cg), pharynx (ph), pedal ciliary pit (cp), and pedal gland of one of the juveniles. The specimen still contains yolk (y) and it is covered in cuticle and surrounded by the folded egg hull; scale bar: 50 µm. 

Shameless self plug

On Thursday, April 10th, I'm giving a talk about work I did on aplacophoran mollusc phylogeny in Ken Halanych's lab. The talk will be at 1 PM in Goddard Building 257 (UQ).

Entonomenia sp. (tricarinata?) from Antarctica

I have data!

My former labmate Joie Cannon and I use the word text as an adjective. As in "This Obelia specimen is totally text." It means that Obelia specimen you are looking at under the microscope looks just like the sketch of it in the textbook. Today I got my first glimpse at my histological sections showing sclerite secretion in Acanthopleura gemmata and Cryptoplax larvaeformis. Sclerite secretion is Acanthopleura gemmata is totally text. Things aren't so clear with Cryptoplax... yet. I also got some amazing micro CT scans of Acanthopleura sclerites back from Jeremy Shaw today.

I can't wait to present some data on chiton biomineralization at the next International Congress of Invertebrate Morphology!

Heron Island debrief

All in all, my time at Heron Island was amazing. That's probably evidenced by the fact that I only actually blogged about twice during the whole time I was there. The biodiversity on the reef was astounding and the meiofauna and communities of animals living on algae were amazing. I spent most of my time snorkeling and flipping over rocks or sitting at the microscope sorting meiofauna or material from "rock washing" or "algae washing." In these samples, I found *one* meiofaunal solenogaster (Meiomenia) that I will send to Katharina Jörger for work she and her student Franzi are doing examining the diversity of meiomeniids. Aside from molluscs, I also found heaps of other interesting animals including Cephalodiscus(!), lots of different species of annelids, benthic chaetognaths, lots of different species of acoels, and a wacky proseriate flatworm with multiple pharynxes (among others).

Cephalodiscus sp. that I found on the red alga Amphiroa. Not an aculiferan, I know, but it is almost certainly a new species and it's pretty darn cute so I had to stick this one in.

I came home with numerous specimens of Cryptoplax larvaeformis as well as some specimens of Acanthopleura gemmata and a couple other interesting but as yet unidentified chitons. I was on the lookout for Schizochiton for Doug Eernisse, Dan Speiser, and Lesley Brooker but unfortunately I didn't find that any. Sorry guys! I was hoping to get the Acanthopleura and maybe the Cryptoplax to spawn but it seems that wasn't in the cards. I'm going to try a few experiments back here to see if I can get them in the mood.

Otherwise, I was on the hunt for aplacophorans. I'm now aware of three sighting of Epimenia (australis?) around Heron but despite flipping over half of the rocks on the island, I left empty handed when it comes to Epimenia. I'm now purusing other avenues to obtain specimens of Epimeina and/or considering other, more reliably accessible species of aplacophorans.

Epimenia (australis?).
Source: http://www.blueanimalbio.com/ruantidongwu/wuban.htm

In the coming weeks, I'm going to be doing tests on various methods to decalcify specimens of chitons for histological sectioning followed by laser-capture microdissection (LMD) in order to extract RNA from specific cell types and study the transcriptomes of cells associated with biomineralization.