Morphometric data and morphological and in-situ images of Fissidentalium aurae sp. nov. from the abyssal Labrador Sea collected in November 2021 ...

• Main Authors: Neuhaus, Jenny, Brix, Saskia, Eichsteller, Angelina, Taylor, James, Linse, Katrin
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre 2024
• Subjects: "EARTH SCIENCE","BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION","ANIMALS/INVERTEBRATES"; Labrador Sea; Lebensspur; Scaphopoda; deep sea; ocean seafloor observation system; species-pair-associations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/c57a3261-f5f8-40e3-bcd3-c749733b3119; https://data.bas.ac.uk/full-record.php?id=GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01822

During the IceDivA2 expedition on RV Sonne in November 2021, specimens of a megafaunal scaphopod species were collected by Agassiz trawl (AGT) and imaged by an Ocean Floor Observation System (OFOS) in the Labrador Sea Basin at abyssal depths of 3380 to 3390 m. Morphological, morphometric and genetic analyses revealed an undescribed species of the scaphopod genus Fissidentalium, which was formally described as Fissidentalium aurae sp. nov. by Linse and Neuhaus in 2024. In-situ images of RV Sonne's OFOS system revealed a shallow inbenthic lifestyle of the scaphopod when it is associated with an anemone, leaving Lebensspuren in the soft abyssal sediments and enabled density estimation of the species. This dataset provides data for 1) Fissidentalium aurae sp. nov. presence record from AGT, shell morphometric measurements, and museum curation numbers (.csv), 2) images files (54) of specimens' shells, soft parts and radula (.jpg), 3) SEM images files (28) of radula and shell structure (.tif), 4) in-situ OFOS ... : The Fissidentalium aurae sp. nov were collected by an AGT with an opening frame of 3.5 m width, 0.7 m height and a 8.7 m long net of 1 cm mesh size was deployed to collect benthic megafauna. For deployment, 1.5 times of cable length to water depth was veered with 0.5 m/s while the ship steamed with one kn. After veering stopped, the vessel steamed a further 20 min with 1kn, before stopping and heaving with 0.5 m/s until the trawl left the seafloor. Heaving until on deck was done with 1.0 m/s. At arrival on deck, the catch was sieved over staggered sieves of 1 cm, 1 mm and 0.5 mm mesh size and visible fauna was removed for taxon identification, live photography, tissue sampling and fixation. Live collected scaphopod specimens for taxonomic studies were fixed in 96% pre-cooled ethanol for molecular and morphological analysis. Most live collected scaphopods had an epizoic anthozoan attached, which were not removed to facilitate the description of the anemone. Further collected shell debris, which had no ...