polychaetes for barcoding

[Louise Allcock]

Dear Geoff,
As co-ordinator of the Census of Marine Life bipolar project, I'm responding on behalf of my colleague Jan Strugnell who mailed the polychaete list requesting ethanol preserved tissue samples.  I'm CCing this to the polychaete list as there may be others who are curious as to our intentions.
Firstly, let me reassure you that this is a properly planned project.  I don't think it would be normal to circulate a project rationale and proposal with a request for tissue samples, but I am happy to share information about the work we are doing.
We did indeed start from a list drawn from a variety of sources, and I am well aware that the list contained cosmopolitan species and species that are now known to comprise a suite of cryptic species.  We also knew that some species were likely to have been placed on the list through misidentifications.  For this reason, we did not start collecting tissue straight away, we contacted leading systematists and ask them to collaborate with us.  We have a large number of collaborators (because we are working across 13 phyla) and these include 3 polychaete taxonomists.  Hence we are reasonably well informed about most species on our list (although I acknowledge it is a broad list and we still have some queries which we are pursuing).
However, to barcode only the very few species that remarkably do appear to have a bipolar distribution would contribute very little to the debate, hence we are attempting to barcode some with cosmopolitan distributions, some which our collaborating systematists think should be split into a suite of species as well as those with disjunct distributions.  We have also included some whose range extent does not quite reach the high Arctic and/or high Antarctic because this enlarges the number of species encompassed adding additional biogeographic data. 
As my colleague Jan mentioned, any tissue samples will be processed through the Guelph barcode facility.  This means that voucher specimens will be preserved to confirm the identity of each species sequenced and placed in a public institution where all researchers will have access to them, and the barcode information will be made available through Genbank and BOLD.  We consider this very important since the bipolar debate has probably been fuelled in part by past misidentifications.
Geoff, I was delighted to hear that you will make some tissue available.  I really do appreciate this.
Please send it me at:

Dr Louise Allcock
The Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute
National University of Ireland Galway
University Road
Galway
Ireland

[Please note there are no postcodes for this part of Ireland]

If you send me entire specimens, then I will arrange to deposit vouchers in a museum.  In your case however, I imagine that vouchers are already deposited with NIWA, in which case I would appreciate getting voucher information together with the specimens.
Please just email me if you have any queries (and this applies to anyone else reading this who thinks they may have tissue of interest to us).
Best wishes,
Louise

Dr Louise Allcock
Co-editor, Journal of Natural History
Adjunct Lecturer, Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute, Galway
[phone]

How useful are the recommended counts and indices in the systematics of the Octopodidae?
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121419916/abstract

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