International Congress on Invertebrate Morphology 3

Last month I attended the International Congress on Invertebrate Morphology in Berlin, Germany. This has quickly become my favorite meeting. A lot of really strong research was presented here and it was really nice to catch up with a lot of old friends. This ICIM had a very strong molluscan showing with a pleasantly surprising majority of the mollusc talks / posters dealing, at least in part, with aculiferans!

Link to the program:
http://www.icim3.org/program.htm

Talks dealing with aculiferans
Evolution and development of photoreceptors in Polyplacophora
Ollie Vöcking

Hox gene expression in polyplacophoran molluscs
Martin Fritsch

It's only a model: seeking an osphradium in more obscure molluscs
Julia Sigwart

Development of the metanephridial and coelomic system in molluscs – more variability than allowed? 
Gerhard Haszprunar

EvoDevo and its bearing on molluscan phylogeny. 
Andi Wanninger

Posters dealing with aculiferans
New insights into molluscan biomineralization through studies of aculiferans
Kevin Kocot

Chitons that live in the dark can see light (Mollusca, Polyplacophora, Lepidopleurida)
Julia Sigwart and Lauren Sumner-Rooney 

A new class of aplacophoran mollusk – or “just” a footless solenogaster?
Christiane Todt  
 
 

Successful Friday Harbor Labs trip

Last week I visited Friday Harbor Labs to collect aplacophorans and chiton's for biomineralization studies. I managed to get about 10 specimens of a soon-to-be described species of Hypomenia and 3 specimens of a new Macellomenia we're working on describing (see pic below).

Macellomenia sp. "schanderi"

The Marine Invertebrate Zoology course shared an unusual mutant Tonicella line at a lacking the normal shell pigment pattern.

Tonicella lineata "blue albino"

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