Marine scientists, we have made a mistake. Eunice aphroditois, is a fearsome aquatic polychaete. Unfortunately, we chose to name it after a domestic abuser. And that needs to be changed.

How did this happen you might ask? In the early 90’s the media was awash with the story of Lorena Bobbitt, the woman who cut off her husband’s penis. She was portrayed as that crazy wife and he as the poor, dismembered husband. I remember it being joked about on SNL. Regrettably, I probably laughed along with it.

Around the same time, scientists discovered Eunice aphroditois. It is a worm that buries itself in the sand waiting for prey, often cutting the victim in half with a fearsome jaw when it strikes. Of course it seemed clever to name it the “Bobbitt Worm”.

But the reality of Lorena Bobbitt’s infamous night was not as it was portrayed in the news (as detailed in an upcoming upcoming Amazon Docuseries and this NY Times article). After years of sexual abuse at the hands of her husband, and after being raped yet again one night, Lorena Bobbitt had enough and cut off her husband’s penis.

Since then, Lorena’s ex-husband, has been in jail for repeatedly assaulting and raping two other women and has otherwise gone on to live a comfortable life profiting from the experience.

Since then, Lorena Gallo, has started a non-profit, Lorena’s Red Wagon, that helps survivors of domestic violence. She is a strong survivor that has turned a terrible night into good.

Let’s do the same. Bobbitt is the last name of a rapist and domestic abuser that should not be immortalized anywhere, not the least being scientific literature. Have we been guilty of that here at DSN? Yes. Can we change the future? Yes. By the time this article is to be published, I will have gone through all posts with the words “Bobbitt Worm” and replace name with Sand Striker, and linking back to this article. I encourage others to do the same.

Because that name needs to be buried in the sand like Eunice aphroditois last snack.

Want to do more? You can donate to an organization that works to end domestic violence and support survivors. Find your local list here at https://nnedv.org/content/state-u-s-territory-coalitions/

The post This marine worm is called the Sand Striker first appeared on Deep Sea News.

User u/Karzdan posted the above image** of Nereis sandersi  to the Reddit forum. The polychaete worm is known from hydrothermal vents and described relatively recently by Blake in 1985.   Interestingly, N. sandersi is eyeless.

Furthermore, the presence of sunken depressions in places where eyes usually occur in N. sandersi is unique for the genus. The occurrence of such depressions is reminiscent of blind cave-dwelling vertebrates which have only vestigial, non-functional eye rudiments remaining from ancestral progenitors which had sight. The very large peristomial ring and enormous palps would appear to be appropriate sensory replacements for a sightless animal in the deep sea. -Blake (1985)

And so begins the Photoshops

**note I am trying to track down the original photographer of the image to credit them here. UPDATE: credit goes to Nicolas Gayet from Paulo Bonifacio lab.

The post Photoshop Battles with this Image of a Hydrothermal Vent Polychaete Worm first appeared on Deep Sea News.

But true nerd credit was earned by the pair for the names that were given to these new species blending their love of nerd culture and taxonomy.

So first up is hat tip to Game of Thrones.

This genus is dedicated to Arya Stark, one of P.B.’s favourite characters in the novel ‘A song of ice and fire’ by George R. R. Martin. The name is composed by ‘abyss’ from the Latin word ‘ăbyssus’ meaning ‘bottomless’ and Arya….The species name came from Latin ‘ăcŭs’ meaning ‘needle’. It refers to modified neurochaetae present on segment 2 similar to a ‘crochet needle’.

And perhaps this little nod to White Walkers

The species name glacigena means ‘ice-born’, which is composed by borrowing from the Latin word ‘glăcĭēs’ meaning ‘ice’ and the Greek word ‘gennó, γεννώ’ meaning ‘born’. It refers to white ganglia like ice.

And where there are the ice borns there are the fire borns! Surely these are clans in a fantasy fiction somewhere?

Species named from the ‘ignĭgĕna’, a poetical epithet of Bacchus meaning ‘fire-born’, which is composed by borrowing from the Latin word ‘ignis’ meaning ‘fire’ and the Greek word ‘gennó, γεννώ’ meaning ‘born’.

And my only comment about this is YASSSSS!

This genus [and species are] dedicated to Hodor, one of P.B.’s favourite characters in the novel ‘A song of ice and fire’ by George R. R. Martin.

And in a moment of cross exchange sure to rial up nerds everywhere is Hodor anduril

The species name is derived from the sword named ‘andúril’ meaning ‘Flame of the West’ and belonging to Aragorn in the novel ‘The lord of the rings’ by J. R. R. Tolkien. It refers to the sword-like modified neurochaetae present in this species.

And let’s not leave out the hipster worm

The species name came from the French word ‘moustachu’ meaning ‘with a moustache’. It refers to the palps directed ventrally, giving the impression that the worm has a moustache.

Now to strut that mythology knowledge.

In the ancient Egyptian religion, ‘Nu’ refers to the deification of the primordial watery abyss whence all life came, also known as ‘the Father of the Gods’ and ‘the Eldest’….Again, in the ancient Egyptian religion, ‘áakhu’ is one of the elements that compose the human soul. An ‘áakhu’ is the glorified spirit or a blessed soul which has passed the final judgement (the Weighing of the Heart). The term refers to the translucent character of the body of this worm.

However, the best name is this loving tribute.

This species is dedicated to Maria Silva, mother of P.B., for her love.

Paulo Bonifácio, Lénaïck Menot; New genera and species from the Equatorial Pacific provide phylogenetic insights into deep-sea Polynoidae (Annelida), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, , zly063, https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zly063

The post A Wormy (and Nerdy) Conquest of the Deep first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Roger Norman Bamber (1949-2015)

I am proud to have been given the task of writing this farewell tribute for my great friend Roger Bamber. I am privileged to have known this unforgettable man and it is now my mission to tell as many people around the world why he was so remarkable.

I can start by telling you that Roger Bamber was a prolific and excellent taxonomist. He is best known for his work on both pycnogonids (sea spiders) and tanaidaceans (which don’t have a common name; an issue we have discussed at great length in the pub). Roger Bamber published a total of 213 scientific papers in his lifetime in addition to many hundreds of reports and non- peer reviewed papers and articles

Roger’s first paper on the Pycnogonida (or Pycnobeasts as he referred to them) was published in 1979 and he followed this first paper with a further 46 papers on them. He established an Order, a Family, a Subfamily, a Genus and 42 new species of pycnogonid. Roger was particularly proud of his 2010 book ‘Sea-spiders (Pycnogonida) of the Northeast Atlantic. Keys and notes to the identification of species’, to which he would point anyone with a query on the group as it was likely covered somewhere within the books 257 pages. A Judith Price, Assistant Collection Manager of Crustacea & Parasites at the Canadian Museum of Nature, noted Roger had a most dismissive attitude to the ecological importance of his beloved pycnobeasts. “If all the pycnogonids on Earth were to vanish tomorrow, I would be one of the five organisms left who gave a damn.”

Judith will be one of the very many who will give a damn that Roger has vanished.

His second love was perhaps the Tanaidacea. Few taxonomists stretch to covering two different groups in this way, yet Roger took this in his stride. He published his first paper on the Tanaidacea in 1986 and his first taxonomic work on them in 1990. His ‘second love’ could be argued to have somewhat overtaken his first, as he went on to describe a total of two families, three subfamilies, 38 genera, one subgenus and an astounding 225 tanaidacean species!

His extraordinary track record for species descriptions does not stop at these favoured taxa as Roger also authored or co-authored seven isopod species, two amphipod species, one leptostracan, six mysids, one Bochusacean, 2 copepod taxa (including a new genus) and 3 polychaete taxa (including a new genus).

Roger appreciated a scientific name with a bit of thought put into it, as he so often put into his species names. This was part of the taxonomic process that he thoroughly enjoyed and which is exemplified by the many unusual names he bestowed upon his new taxa. He was particularly proud of the name

• Tanystylum sinoabductus Bamber, 1992 a species of pycnogonid which came from the South China Sea and was thus a ‘Chinese takeaway’ although the etymology in this case modestly reads: “The name for this species, unique in being the first to be described from Hong Kong, is from the Latin, meaning that which is taken from China.”
• Macrolabrum impedimenta Bamber, 2005 starred in a collection of species in which “The novel nomenclature derives from the names of characters or places from the ‘Discworld’ series of novels by Terry Pratchett, particularly Pratchett (1999) which refers to the “Last Continent”, a place which “just happens to be a bit … Australian”. All the taxa were from Western Australia and Macrolabrum impedimenta is a tanaid species with characteristic spination on each of the legs that give it the appearance of having lots of smaller legs hence the Etymology reads “from the Latin impedimenta – luggage, the Luggage being a notable and fearsome entity from the Counterweight Continent, Discworld, with a lot of small legs”.
• Keska sei Błażewicz-Paszkowycz, Bamber & Jóźwiak, 2012, is one of my favourites for which the Etymology reads: “Phonetically from the name apparently given to this species by a French colleague on first seeing the drawings (in combination with the specific epithet)”. Enough said.

In total Roger Bamber established 338 taxa—an absolutely amazing track record.

Currently there are seven species named in his honour, including genera of Pycnogonida and Tanaidacea. Bamberus jinigudirus Stepieri, Blazewicz-Paszkowycz, 2013; Austrodecus bamberi Wang, Huang, Lin & Zheng, 2013; Kalliapseudes bamberi Drumm & Heard, 2011; Leptognathia bamberi Larsen & Shimomura, 2007; Makassaritanais bamberi Gutu, 2012; Bamberene Staples, 2014; Chauliopleona bamberi Bird, 2015. A special, forthcoming issue of the journal Zootaxa that will name many more after this prolific man.

Roger’s reach extended far beyond taxa and publications. Throughout his working life Roger developed and maintained an interest in numerous diverse fields, including of course deep-sea biology, and he will be remembered by many for his attendance at international meetings. He was an integral member of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) community was responsible for the Pycnogonida and Tanaidacea. He also provided valuable input to the World Register of Deep-Sea Species (WoRDSS). Roger was a well-known member of a number of editorial boards (Zootaxa Editor, for Pycnogonida, Tanaidacea, Cumacea; Editor of Zookeys, Pycnogonida; Editorial Advisory Board for Polish Polar Research; Guest Editor for Journal of Natural History) and his input to these was invaluable.

One of the many tasks of a modern taxonomist is to provide guidance and advice to fledgling taxonomists as they prepare their first papers and learn the ‘tools of the trade’ and this is something Roger was particularly adept at. He would gladly accept manuscripts to edit and comment on, and had the required patience and ability conduct this task with ease.   He was a celebrated pedant, always ready to correct a grammatical injustice and known to carry a red pen in his top pocket for such occasions as might arise. His talents as an eloquent writer of prose must not be overlooked.

Roger was always great company, interesting, engaging, controversial, but always good fun. He certainly stood out from the crowd with his unmistakable and timeless unique style! He was unusual, amongst academics, in successfully carrying off a mixture of a great intellect and no-nonsense approach to science, with an infectious amiability and ability to enjoy life to the fullest. He was always (and I mean ALWAYS) happy to have a beer with you (and definitely two or three). He smoked more than anyone I have ever known, and he also really appreciated good food. Therefore, it was in the pub, restaurant, or outside smoking that Roger could be relied upon to be found and it was always in these places that the best discussions, friendships and memories were made.

I thought long and hard about how best to end this farewell but decided that it was probably best done by the man himself, so I invite you to watch a presentation by Roger which was recorded at Joel Hedgepeth’s memorial meeting in 2008.

I hope that by watching this video you will get a flavour of Roger’s character, his wonderful pedantry, his particular sense of humour, and his immense knowledge.

Over to you Rog…

Bamber R.N. , 2005. The Tanaidaceans (Arthropoda: Crustacea: Peracarida: Tanaidacea) of Esperance, Western Australia, Australia. Proceedings of the Twelfth International Marine Biological Workshop: pp. 613-728. In: F.E. Wells, D.I. Walker and G.A. Kendrick (eds). The Marine Flora and Fauna of Esperance, Western Australia. Western Australian Museum, Perth.

Błażewicz-Paszkowycz M., Bamber R.N. & Jóźwiak P. 2012. Tanaidaceans (Crustacea: Peracarida) from the SoJaBio joint expedition in slope and deeper waters of Japan. Deep Sea Research II. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr2.2012.08.006

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With the first taste of palolo I understood the Samoans’ love for it. Certainly it suggested a salty caviar, but with something added, a strong, rich whiff of the mystery and fecundity of the ocean depths.

—R. Steinberg. Pacific and Southeast Asian cooking. Time-Life Books, New York, 1970 (opening quote from from Schulze 2006)

This is not a picture of squid ink pasta. This is a picture showing writhing, detached body parts of polychaete worms (“palolo”, a.k.a. genus Palola), considered a delicious delicacy on a number of Pacific islands such as Vanuatu and Samoa. I’m told that “worms are enthusiastically gathered with a net, and are either eaten raw or cooked in several different manners”, and that “hardcore palolo connoisseurs grab the wriggling green-and-blue worms and swallow them raw on the spot”. Palola worms carry out mass nighttime spawning during summer months in the Southern Hemisphere, prompting a collection craze across Pacific islands from October – November.

I didn’t know this was a thing. I’m all about the invertebrates, but I think I’m going to stick to eating shellfish and shrimp. Two reasons: First, I’m not the kind of person that can stomach this type of cuisine. The spaghetti-like mass that islanders collect is not the actual Palola worm itself, but a dense package of sperm and eggs that detaches from the main body before spawning (the “epitoke”). “..as thick as vermicelli soup..the water is milky with mucous” is not a description that whets my appetite. On the contrary, it makes me wonder whether someone has thought of making a Palola-themed adult movie.

The second reason I’m staying away? These worms are listed on the IUCN Redlist of Threatened species–local extinction of Palola species has been observed in some places as a result of overharvesting. These worms have immense cultural significance for native Pacific Islanders, and I’d hate to be a food tourist contributing to an unsustainable fishery (since eating palolo inherently reduces the potential reproductive success of these polychaete species).

But mainly, after watching this video of epitokes, I just can’t even. And also, because it apparently tastes “a little scratchy.”

References:

Schulze, A. (2006) Phylogeny and Genetic Diversity of Palolo Worms (Palola, Eunicidae) from the Tropical North Pacific and the Caribbean. Biological Bulletin, 210(1): 25-37

The post I prefer my seafood without sperm, thank you first appeared on Deep Sea News.

This species bring a whole new meaning to butt face. It’s Latin name even means butt face.  I jest… it actually means resembling a pig’s rump. Chaetopterus pugaporcinus is a polychaete and like other worms it has segments.  Some of the segments are just a little bit inflated, i.e. this worm is all about the bass and not the treble.  But it’s not just it’s looks that puts this little fellow on my favorite species list.  It feeds by deploying a mucus cloud that traps material in the water.  Shaped like a butt and uses a mucus cloud to feed…enough said.

The post These are a few of my favorite species: Pig Butt Worm first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Meet the giant Antarctic scaleworm Eulagisca. Last week, I wandered down into the Scripps Benthic Invertebrate Collection and saw this bad boy sitting in a giant gallon-sized jar (here’s a coffee mug for scale).

Yes, that’s a worm. For reference, most scaleworms look like this:

When I mentioned that the GIANT FRICKIN’ SCALEWORM to the collections manager, she chortled evilly and opened the jar for me. It gets worse. So much worse.

BEHOLD: the jaws of Eulagisca. This photo is taken from the top of the jar looking down. Yes, that entire purple structure is a GIANT SET OF JAWS sticking out of the front of the GIANT WORM.

Many polychaete worms have an eversible pharynx – most of the time those jaws are tucked away, but when the worm wants to feed, the entire front of their throat rolls out of their mouth. Here’s a better photo from the Smithsonian Antarctic Invertebrates collection. Yes, that scale bar say 2 cm (0.8 inches) – the jaws and pharynx are around two inches long!

I could not find any ecological information on Eulagisca in the scientific literature, so I don’t know what it eats. It inhabits the continental shelf off Antarctica, and could be a predator or scavenger or both. Chris Mah, being all up on the Antarctic invertebrates, wrote about Eulagisca a couple months ago, and guess that it was predatory. Any experts in the audience should chime in. In the meantime – AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

The post New nightmare fuel: the giant scaleworm Eulagisca first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Once upon a time in 1993, when I was imbibing my sophomore year at college in Australia – drinking in the knowledge, so to speak – I heard tell of a horrific crime, one that struck fear into the hearts and sub-heart-areas of men everywhere.  Accompanied by the essential preface “Only in America…”, men whispered and women snickered about a suburban woman, Lorena Bobbitt, who had taken to her husband’s genitalia with a Ginsu knife and later discarded the detached digit out the window of her car (rumour has it, directly into the windshield of a car coming the other way).  Soon enough just the name Bobbitt become synonymous with penile amputation, even in Brisbane, about as far from Mannassas Virginia as it’s possible to be (a reassuring thought for the male residents of Queensland’s capital, I can tell you).  If the third digit in your birth year is an 8 or higher, you probably have no idea what I mean, but just trust me, those were dark dark times…

But Bobbitt has another homonymous meaning, more annelid than anaconda, more polychaete than pajama python.  It’s the common name for a truly remarkable worm: Eunice aphroditois, the Sand Striker.  It’s easy to think E. aphroditois was named by someone with a (somewhat blue) sense of humour, and some have done so,  but the spelling suggests that the names are not related and – rather frustratingly – I have not been able to confirm the origins of the name, at least not without attracting the attention of our IT staff…  Regardless of where the common name comes from, the animal itself is a fantastic critter, one of the largest of all polychaetes (reaching 3 meters in length and thick as a bratwurst), with a colourful cuticle and armed with a pair of heavily toothed jaws that command respect, and not just of the knee-crossing variety.

In 2009, the Blue Reef Aquarium in the UK discovered a truly enormous one of these bad boys in one of their exhibits after a series of severed carcasses were found floating in the tank.  They nicknamed him Barry, and here he is…

Sand Strikers‘s are ambush predators.  They hang around sticking out the sand like the one above, just waiting for some hapless victim to come close enough to trigger their sensitive peri-oral tentacles and then slam!

As we go into this weekend, griping about another hard work week in the books, just be glad you’re neither John Wayne Bobbitt, nor a hapless Philippine goatfish. And next time you’re doing the stingray shuffle across a beach or reef flat, just consider that, while you may be scaring away the rays with ruthless efficiency, you’re doing it using what must be the optimal Sand Striker finding strategy in existence, and wiggly pink toes are just about ideal size for those hair-trigger jaws…

The post More annelid than anaconda first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Bombardier Worm, Swima bombiviridis

Carnivorous Sponge, Chondrocladia (Meliiderma) turbiformis

Of course here at DSN, we have long known these species are the shiznit.  The carnivorous sponges made are #3 for the 27 best deep-sea species.

The number three slot is taken over by sponges that are not just happy with filter feeding.  These sponges have a taste for flesh…human flesh.  I jest, they don’t eat all humans just babies.  Seriously, these sponges go after tiny crustaceans which seem to be the tasty preference for many of the carnivores in the countdown.  From Dr. Vacelet, “The prey, mostly small crustaceans and other invertebrates provided with setae or thin appendages, is trapped on the surface of appendages of the sponges, which is lined by tiny hook-like spicules acting as Velcro. Then the cells of the sponge migrate towards the prey, and individually phagocytize and digest fragment of the prey.” The first species of this group was discovered recently in 1995 by scientists in French caves.  Since the initial discovery many more species have been discovered on the abyssal plains, seamounts, and virtually every other nook and cranny of the deep.  The four genera have quite different forms ranging from grass-like, to a candelabra shape, to my personal favorite a lollipop tree.

This carnivorous sponges are so cool they even grace my personal homepage. In August 2009, I also wrote about the bombardier worms.

Osborn et al. report in Science seven previously unknown species (0.7 to 3.6 inches) of annelid worms hailing from the deep pelagic (>1800m).  All the new species form a distinctive group within the Cirratuliformia,a recently proposed higher taxonomic group that encompases seven other groups currently recognized as families.  The species here fall in the currently described Acrocirridae but appear to be fairly genetically distinct from other known cirratuliforms. One of the really cool findings, in addition to the distinctive morphological adaptations of the group described below, is this would represent a third, and independent, invasion of the typically benthic, i.e. living in the mood ooze of the seefloor, cirratuliforms into the nice, clean pelagic realm.  It is not just taxonomy and genes that make this group special.  Scratch that.  It is all taxonomy and genes that make this group special!  Five of these species have pairs of oval-shaped organs evolved from branchaie, i.e. gills, that serve as green “bioluminescent bombs”.  These bombs can be dropped like depth charges, releasing brilliant flashes, and speculated to ward off encroaching predators. The presence of smaller B-Bombs are thought to imply that these species can regenerate them as needed.

The post The Best New Species of 2009 first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Say hello to my little fried… In fact, this guy is so small you might have missed if you didn’t use the right sieve mesh size! So small, that they are best viewed as a scanning electron micrograph (SEM) image like the one on the right. Ophryotrocha fabriae is a new polychaete annelid in the family Dorvilleidae, named after french researcher Marie-Claire Fabri. This little bugger comes from a hydrothermal vent at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Polychaetes are segmented worms with “leg-like” extensions called parapodia. These parapodia have a stiff, unique structure embedded in it called a cheata, meaning bristle (hence why they are often called bristleworms polychaete = many bristles).

What I really like about polychaetes though are the wicked eversible pharynges! You think that its mouth (the upper left end of the worm above) is just a little hole, but then BAM! booyah in your backside you just got punkd by eversible pharynx. Just so you have an idea of what is on the end of the pharynx here is an SEM of the jaws.

Here is a line drawing of the complete pharyngeal jaw of an average size specimen.

Paxton, H., & Morineaux, M. (2009). Three Species of Dorvilleidae (annelida: Polychaeta) Associated With Atlantic Deep-Sea Reducing Habitats, With The Description of Ophryotrocha Fabriae, New Species Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 122 (1), 14-25 DOI: 10.2988/08-22.1

The post New Species Friday 10/30/09 – Ophryotrocha fabriae first appeared on Deep Sea News.