Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 136

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SOLITARY ASCIDIANS (TUNICATA, ASCIDIACEA
AND SORBERACEA) OF THE FAROES
tion there was a need to complement the in-
vestigations from the 1920s, which almost
entirely had been within the 100 meter depth
contour. This led to the BIOFAR 2 pro-
gramme for which sampling took place from
19 June 1995 to 31 August 2000.
Results
In all 1,426 deployments (referred to as sta-
tions) were conducted during the BIOFAR
programmes (Nørrevang et al., 1994; Sør-
ensen et al., 2001). In addition, there were
other deployments, used for special pur-
poses, such as examination of the animal
diversity associated with horse mussel beds
(Dinesen and Ockelmann, 2005), contain-
ing stations that are not included in the an-
nounced stations lists.
Some of the applied gear was, however,
not suitable for collecting ascidians: In the
case of the Alfredo Bottom trawl the foot-
rope either runs over these organisms, or
they slip through the meshes. The hand sam-
pling in the Far-Coast Project was performed
on too shallow habitat for these organisms.
Apparently, no ascidians were collected in
the meiofauna dredge or observed in the
BIOFAR1 photos. Excluding those stations,
there are 1,325 stations; in 225 (17 %) of
these solitary ascidians were recorded (Table
1).
The gear types vary also with regard to
obtained quality of the samples. The speci-
mens sampled with the bottom trawl and the
scallop dredges were generally in critical
condition, having the branchial sac filled
with sand. The best quality, apart from the
hand collected material, was obtained by the
Rothlisberg-Pearcy sledge.
See Table I for an overview of the gear
used, stations and records of the BIOFAR
programmes.
Before the BIOFAR programme started in
1987, twenty four solitary ascidian species
had been recorded within the Faroese EEZ.
As a result of BIOFAR the number has been
raised to thirty six (Table 2); this is an in-
crease by 50 %. The twelve new species to
the area are: Ascidia mentula Miiller, 1776;
Styela atlantica (Van Name, 1912); Styela
similis (Monniot, 1970); Styela theeli (Árn-
báck-Christie-Linde, 1921); Polycarpa por-
culus (Monniot and Monniot, 1979); Cnemi-
docarpa mollispina (Árnbáck-Christie-Linde,
1922); Cnemidocarpa mortenseni (Hart-
meyer, 1912); Molgula herdmani (Bjerkan,
1905); Molgula mira (Ámbáck, 1931); Mol-
gula occulta (Kuppfer, 1875); Eugyra is-
landica (Millar, 1974); and Asajirus arcticus
(Hartmeyer, 1923).
Only three of the species previously
recorded from the area were not recorded
during BIOFAR. These species are Corello
borealis, Pelonaia corrugata, and Halo-
cynthia pyriformis.
Two of the genera Cnemidocarpa and
Asajirus have been recorded for the fírst
time within the Faroese EEZ.
The total number of individuals that I
have identified to species in this project is
1,944.
Species list
The list includes the following parameters
for each species:
Gooddescription: Recommended literature