This month at the blog, we wish to present Hydroza, which is a class found within phylum Cnidaria. This lesser-known taxa is perhaps more known than thought, as well-known species like Portuguese man-o-wars (Physalia physalis), the freshwater genus Hydra, fire coral (Milleporidae), and by-the-wind sailors (Velella velella). Also, […]

This month it is time for another group of polychaetes, the family Sabellidae. Sabellids are present from intertidal to abyssal marine waters all around the world (Rouse et al. 2022). They inhabit both soft substrates such as sand or mud and hard substrates such as rocks or coral […]

This month’s group of animals on the spotlight are nemerteans, also known as ribbon worms, vermiform creatures belonging to the phylum Nemertea. They include more than 1300 species, typically long and slender with soft contractile bodies. Most nemerteans are marine, predominantly benthic or bottom dwellers, but some species […]

This month’s ”Group of the month” is a bit of shameless self-promotion. I will present an animal group today, where we conduct quite a lot of research on. However, it is nonetheless really interesting and worth to learn more about it. The family Parergodrilidae belongs to the annelids […]

For my second entry in our advent calendar, I will again present a taxonomic paper. This time it is surprisingly not about worms, but about a rather intriguing group of crustaceans, Facetotecta (Figure 1). It is a small group of about 14 species, all in the genus Hansenocaris. […]

Another paper I really enjoyed reading this year was “Sampling multiple life stages significantly increases estimates of marine biodiversity”, published last April by Svetlana Maslakova and her colleagues. They argue that most surveys of marine life underestimate the total number of species because they rely almost entirely on […]

One of my favourite papers this year is, logically, about two of my favourite topics: taxonomy and worms. In this paper, Lavesque et al. revise the family Terebellidae sensu stricto (a part of the spaghetti worms I presented in a previous blog post) in French waters. They review […]

Text and pictures by Maël Grosse Among all the worm-like animals in the sea, polychaetes, or bristle worms, are probably the most diverse and striking group. This month is the opportunity to look at one of the most beautiful group of polychaetes (Fig. 1), the family Terebellidae Johnston, […]

Today, our paper about Perinereis species from the intertidal coasts of the Red Sea, Gulf of Suez and Suez Canal lead by Asmaa Haris Elgetany was published in ZooKeys. It is her third paper from her internship at our group and fittingly we are describing three new species […]

Suddenly it’s already November, so let us introduce another cool animal in the FEZ blog. This time you can learn about an enigmatic little-known group: the acoels. Acoela is an order of tiny flattened unsegmented worms, belonging to the phylum Xenacoelomorpha (pronounced “zenacelomorpha”). They live mainly in benthic […]