Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 08/17/2012 - 10:11
Forums
Ecosystem Study of the Chukchi Shoal

This is an awesome website. I just thought you might want to double check a caption on one of the pictures in the August 14th post. The picture is labeled "Brittle stars surround a colonial bryozoan." The picture looks an awful lot like an elasmobranch egg case, not a bryozoan. It is impossible to confirm without the specimen, but I just wanted to point out the potential error to make sure that this was not a consistent miss-identification problem. Say Hi to the CBL crew from me. -Hali Kilbourne

Sat, 08/18/2012 - 17:07

Anonymous

It not positive, but it looks to me like an egg case for a snail (maybe family naticidae). -Lisa Wilt

Sun, 08/19/2012 - 13:28

Deanna Wheeler

Hi Lisa--I asked the trawl people. Here is what they said.
You are all right. There are bryozoans that look similar to this but this is an egg case. We just started trawling up the bryozoans and our taxonomist changed her assessment. This is most probably a gastropod egg case. A lot of moon snails make cases that have the same shape and we have two different moon snail species up here (Lunatia and Cryptonatica). At some of our stations, these cases are very abundant. They can also co-occur with the bryozoans, which is nice because next to each other, they are easier to tell apart. Thanks for the conversation!
Thanks for the help--
Deanna

Sun, 08/19/2012 - 13:28

Deanna Wheeler

Hello Hali-- What interesting discussions we have had since your post. Here is what Team trawl came up...
You are all right. There are bryozoans that look similar to this but this is an egg case. We just started trawling up the bryozoans and our taxonomist changed her assessment. This is most probably a gastropod egg case. A lot of moon snails make cases that have the same shape and we have two different moon snail species up here (Lunatia and Cryptonatica). At some of our stations, these cases are very abundant. They can also co-occur with the bryozoans, which is nice because next to each other, they are easier to tell apart. Thanks for the conversation!
Thanks, again. Good eye!
Deanna