ALBERT

Description: Food samples from 27 Buller’s mollymawks Diomedea bulleri from the New Zealand region showed that cephalopods were, by frequency of occurrence and by mass, their preferred food. Fish, crustaceans, and tunicates, in decreasing order of importance, also were taken. Seventeen species of Cephalopoda were identified by their beaks, with 78.5% of individuals belonging to the Ommastrephidae (77% Nototodarus spp.) and 10% to the Histioteuthidae. The diet was compared with that of four other small species of Diomedea, and found to be similar to that of D. chrysostoma, D. irrorata, and D. cauta, but different from that of D. melanophris, whose preferred food is euphausiids. Squid-fishing operations around New Zealand may come into competition with Buller’s mollymawk.

Description: Squid regurgitated by Greyheaded and Yellownosed Albatrosses at the Prince Edward Islands were predominantly two onychoteuthid species, Kondakovia longimana and Moroteuthis knipovitchi. Both squid are characteristic of cold, Antarctic waters and may have been caught south of the Antarctic Convergence, some 350 km to the south of the breeding station. Both albatross species regurgitated similar squid (by species and size), and these squid were similar to those found in previous studies of the diet of Wandering, Sooty and Lightmantled Sooty Albatrosses at the Prince Edward Islands

Description: The development of natural plankton populations in tanks (1000l) and in Kiel Bight is compared with special references to mechanisms affecting species composition in spring and early summer. In a first experiment, three tanks filled with surface water just prior to the bloom (February 1983) were held under different light conditions. Exponential growth coincided with onset of the growth in the field. Growth in the two darkened tanks was retarded. In the field, a bloom of mainly Thalassiosira polychorda was observed, whereas in the light tank Thlassiosira 'pseudonana' and in the two darker tanks Skeletonema costatum were the domninant species. The observed shift in species compositions between tanks and in the field can be attributed partly to differences in growth strategies of species involved but also to the specific effect of population enclosure. In a second experiment (May/ June 1983) the influence of grazing pressure was studied in two tanks with different abundance of metazooplankton. Nauplii as well as large protozoans were grazed down more rapidly than the samller phytoflagellates, which confirmed earlier hypotheses based on field observations. After decline of grazers, possibly due to starvation, a succession from bacteria to nanoflagellates and then ciliates was observed.

Description: Long-term investigations of pore-water ammonium concentrations and sediment oxygen uptake were carried out in three different sediment types along a slope in Kiel Bight. The inverse relation between mineralization rates and ammonium concentrations at the three stations is explained by the differences in the role of various mechanisms transporting nutrients out of the sediments. Direct water exchange due to turbulent or density driven processes, bioturbation and pumping activity of benthic macrofauna and molecular diffusion are involved to various extents in nutrient fluxes out of the sediments studied. The role of different sediment types in the interaction with the pelagic system is discussed in a conceptual framework of pelagic system functioning in Kiel Bight.

Description: The publications of Matsuoka (1983) and Bujak (1984) on dinoflagellate cysts from the Neogene of Japan and the Paleogene‐Neogene of the Bering Sea‐northern North Pacific areas, respectively, resulted in the erection of two new species by each author which are synonymous. Impagidinium pacificum Bujak and Spiniferites ovatus Bujak are therefore designated junior synonyms of Impagidinium japonicum Matsuoka and Spiniferites hexatypicus Matsuoka. Another species, Spiniferites ovatus Matsuoka, does not occur in the material examined by Bujak. Specimens assigned by Matsuoka to Nematosphaeropsis labyrinthea and Tectatodinium pellitum are reassigned to Nematosphaeropsis lemniscata Bujak and Filisphaera filifera Bujak, respectively. The species Reticulatosphaera stellata Matsuoka, which Matsuoka designated the type species of his new genus Reticulatosphaera, is designated a subjective junior synonym of a species originally named by Benedek (1972) as Cleistosphaeridium actinocoronatum. C. actinocoronatum is transferred to Reticulatosphaera and becomes the type‐species of this genus. Specimens assigned to Areoligera senonensis Lejeune‐Carpentier sensu Gocht 1969 by Matsuoka (1974, 1983) and Tanyosphaeridium fusiform by Matsuoka (1974) are reattributed to Systematophora ancyrea and Distatodinium fusiforme (Matsuoka) comb, nov., respectively. Bujak also erected eight Eocene to Pleistocene concurrent‐range zones, two of which were named the I. pacificum and Spiniferites ovatus Zones. These are renamed the I. japonicum and 5. hexatypicus Zones, and the zonation is modified to extend the Trinovantedinium boreale Zone into the early Oligocene, and to restrict the S. hexatypicus Zone to the Miocene.

Description: Morphological characteristics of two large females of Haliphron atlanticus STEENSTRUP (= Alloposus mollis VERRILL) are described and illustrated. The soft and gelatinous body, the shape of the mantle aperture, the formation of the funnel and adhesive apparatus, and the straplike septa connecting the mantle and funnel and containing the stellate ganglion are characteristic features of the species. One specimen, weighing 41 kg after fixation, was found dead near Bergen (60°14′ N, 5°16′ E) in May 1983. The other, weighing 25 kg after being frozen, was caught alive at 210 m off Vestvägöy in the Lofoten archipelago (68°20′ N. 14°14′ E) in November 1984. It was possibly feeding on the prawn, Pandalus borealis KRøYER. Both specimens had arms partly missing and web torn, but were otherwise well preserved. Previous records of H. atlanticus are confined to tropical and warm-temperate areas. The present findings represent the first records from north of 42° N.

Description: This check-list is a compilation of the marine molluscs recorded from Norway and the abyssal depths of the Norwegian Sea. Molluscs not recorded from the Norwegian fauna but found on the North Sea plateau, the British North Sea coast, the Swedish west coast, and in Danish waters are also included. Distributional data are provided for each species. Most commonly used synonyms are listed, together with type species for each accepted generic name. Systematical code numbers are included for easy retrieval of information. An alphabetical index of all generic names mentioned concludes the check-list. Recent taxonomic alterations and all distributional records are documented by literature references.