NIWA Invertebrate Collection

01/07/2024

Worm wishes on International Polychaete Day! 🪱

📸 Rob Stewart

08/05/2024

Who wore it better? Celebs at the Met Gala or these fabulous sea slugs? 🤔😍

Fashion forward sea slugs and nudibranchs rock vibrant colours and bold patterns on the underwater catwalk every day. Who needs a designer outfit when you’ve got frilly gills? 💅💃🏼

Learn more about the sea slugs of New Zealand, from woolly sea hares to clown nudibranchs, in our Super Sea Slugs guide here ➡️ https://niwa.co.nz/oceans/identification-guides/super-sea-slugs

07/05/2024

Real-life Pokémon? 👀

Not quite. Spiny sea slaters!

They look like trilobite imposters, but these creatures aren’t related to the extinct critters at all. They’re a type of isopod (Brucerolis genus) that live in the deep sea. Check out those eyes! 😍

Measuring about 2-5cm long, spiny sea slaters are scavengers, searching the seafloor for tasty morsels. Equipped with spiky armour they’d be an unpleasant mouthful for a fish! Sea ya slater predators. 🛡️

They’re commonly found in depths between 490 and 1,700m along the eastern margin of New Zealand. 🌊

These ones were found earlier this year by our team onboard RV Tangaroa for an Ocean Census voyage to the Bounty Trough to discover new species. 🚢

📸 Rebekah Parsons-King

01/05/2024

Are you new here? 👀🤨

NIWA marine invertebrate systematist Rachael Peart has added another new species of amphipod to her growing list of over 100 discoveries. 📋

Rachael and University of Hamburg colleague, Anne-Nina Lörz, recently found the specimen in the NIWA Invertebrate Collection and identified it as possibly new to science. 💡

The amphipod had been collected from 4,159m in the waters off northern New Zealand a few years prior. 🌊

After taking a closer look and comparing it to other species, Rachael and Anna confirmed their suspicion, they had discovered a new species. 🎉 Rachael named it Amathillopsis lowry in recognition of her late PhD supervisor Dr Jim Lowry.

“Amphipods occur in almost every environment around the world and there are over 10,000 known species, so finding new ones isn’t uncommon,” says Rachael, “but it is always exciting when we do.” 👏

See more here ➡️https://media.australian.museum/media/dd/documents/1885_complete.9102530.pdf

📸 Top: Male Amathillopsis lowry, Bottom: Female Amathillopsis lowry, NIWA.

19/12/2023

Aotearoa New Zealand’s marine biodiversity checklist has been updated in the latest NIWA biodiversity memoir, with an increase of 3,630 known living species since the turn of the century. 🙌

Nodding animals, pandoras, goblet worms, acorn worms, horsehair worms, tardigrades and opalinids – these are just some of the fabulous names of our marine life! 🐟🐚

The Marine Biota of Aotearoa New Zealand publication represents our current knowledge of marine biodiversity, including sponges, corals, hydroids, worms, molluscs, crustaceans, sea stars, fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and algae. The total number of known living species in this update is 18,494, a 24 per cent increase since the last update. 🐬🦀

The publication was edited by: Michelle Kelly, Sadie Mills, Marianna Terezow, Carina Sim-Smith & Wendy Nelson, and was made possible thanks to 67 experts at NIWA, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland MuseumTāmaki Paenga Hira, the University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, GNS Science Te Pū Ao, as well as overseas institutions and independent taxonomists. 👏

We will be sharing more on this exciting update in the new year, including opportunities to order a hard copy! 📚

In the meantime, access the digital version here ➡️ https://niwa.co.nz/biodiversity-memoir-136-the-marine-biota-of-aotearoa-new-zealand

29/11/2023

Shells are so last season. 💅💁

Here’s a hermit crab with a difference. Unlike its shell-dwelling counterparts, this fashion-forward hermit crab has a zoanthid on its back.

The hermit crab initially picks up a shell to live in, but at some stage, the anemone-like zoanthid settles on the shell and grows to envelop the crab. 🦀

Eventually, the zoanthid takes on the role of the shell, and the crab no longer has to worry about risky shell swaps. 🐚

The zoanthid gets carried around, taking advantage of food along the way, and its stinging tentacles provide extra protection for the hermit crab, win-win!

📸 Chazz Marriott

08/11/2023

Walking on the beach and you come across these… 😲

What are they? Gooseneck barnacles! Unlike the barnacles glued to the rocky shore, these barnacles have a stalk and are pelagic, meaning they live in the open ocean. 🌊

They attach themselves to all sorts of floating objects such as logs, buoys, rubbish, macroalgae, boats and turtles, and are often washed up on beaches after storms. 🐢

Beachgoers encountering recently washed-up gooseneck barnacles might see their cirri, or ‘legs’, moving in and out of their shells.

They use these feathery filaments to filter feed – catching plankton and other small food particles floating in the water.

Have you come across gooseneck barnacles before? 🏖️

📸 Pelagic gooseneck barnacles washed up on Gemstone Beach, Te Waewae Bay – Katie Cook.

30/10/2023

‘Cause baby you’re a firebrick. 🎆🎶

Meet today’s star, the firebrick sea star, Asterodiscides truncates. These funky starfish are brightly coloured in shades of purple, yellow, orange and red. ⭐

The top of the sea star is covered in lumps and bumps of different sizes called tubercles.

Like other starfish, they have water-powered tube feet on their underside that they use to move around the seafloor and to pass food along to their central mouth.

They live in subtidal zones around northern New Zealand, the Kermadec Islands and southern Australia, and have been found in depths of 60–250 metres. 🌊

📸 Rob Stewart

16/10/2023

Here’s a sea slug to lighten up your Monday – Janolus ignis, ignis meaning fire! 🔥

These fiery sea slugs are nocturnal. During the day, they hide amongst the bushy, red bryozoans they feed on, emerging at night to nibble on the branches. 🌖

Endemic to New Zealand, they can be found in subtidal zones around the country from 8–25 metres. Some can get as big as 5cm but most are usually 2.5–3.5cm. 🌊

Learn more about the sea slugs found in New Zealand in our guide here ➡️ https://niwa.co.nz/oceans/marine-identification-guides-and-fact-sheets/super-sea-slugs

📸 Luca Davenport

18/08/2023

A database holding information on more than 700 shallow-water seafloor invertebrates, such as snails, crabs, and worms, is now available. 🗃️

The New Zealand Trait Database is the first of its kind in Aotearoa and includes information on everything from the animals’ feeding method and body shape, to the ways they move and mix the sediment they live in. 🦀 🐚

Creating it was no easy feat! NIWA marine ecologist, Orlando Lam-Gordillo, led the effort, scouring hundreds of pieces of scientific literature and biological collections to gather and compile the information. 👏

The database will be a useful tool to help increase our understanding of seafloor ecosystem functioning and how it might respond to environmental change.

Read the full story here 👉 https://niwa.co.nz/news/new-creature-catalogue-compiled-to-aid-conservation

📸 Orlando Lam-Gordillo

14/08/2023

The king of prickly! 👑

This little critter is a juvenile prickly king crab (Paralomis zealandica). It is a member of the family Lithodidae, a group of deep-sea crustaceans. 👑

Like lots of other king crabs, the prickly king crab is heavily armoured with sharp spines all over its body. 🌵

They aren’t the largest king crabs in New Zealand, that title is held by Lithodes aotearoa, which can have a leg span up to 1.3 metres! Paralomis zealandica can reach up to 13cm across its back. 🦀

They can be found in southern New Zealand waters from the Chatham Rise down to the Campbell and Bounty Plateaus from 254–1212 metres, but normally from 550–650 metres.

Did you know king crabs are all right-handed? 😮 The right claw is usually much bigger than the left, and the larger claw is usually used for crushing while the other is used for cutting!

📸 Rob Stewart

08/05/2023

Gems from the deep. 💎⁣
⁣
Amphipods are a group of small crustaceans that live in all aquatic environments and even in some terrestrial ones too. ⁣
⁣
⬇️ These ones are part of the Epimeriidae family and are found in New Zealand and Antarctic waters at varying depths. 🦐⁣
⁣
These little critters come in a range of colours and many are covered in long spines. It’s not known exactly what the spines do but it’s thought they may offer protection from predators by making the animal harder to see or simply by making it unpleasant to eat. 🤕⁣
⁣
The prickly white amphipod shown in the middle left of the picture lives inside sponges and uses its spines to camouflage itself within its squishy home.⁣
⁣
Worldwide there are over 10,000 amphipod species, with over 550 species known from New Zealand, including the sandhoppers you see at the beach! 🏖️⁣
⁣
Most amphipods are only about 1cm long, but there are giant ones, up to 30cm long, living in the deepest trenches of the ocean. 😮⁣