OUR ANIMALS

Animal Facility of the Hejnol Group

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Animal facility – the Hejnol group

The Hejnol group cultures a broad range of animal taxa which are used for studying the evolution and development of animal diversity by using morphological and molecular methods.

Increasing the number of research organisms and the interpretation of the data on the basis of a resolved phylogeny provides a powerful toolkit for understanding evolution. -Andreas Hejnol

In the animal facility there are two large incubators, one smaller algae incubator at 16°C and one 500 litre seawater aquarium system. The room is kept at a continuous 22°C and there is a 14/10 light/dark cycle for the room, all incubators and the aquarium. The maintenance of the room, equipment and organisms is taken care of by fulltime animal technician.

Animals we culture:

Clade	Species	Food	Conditions	Fresh/Sea (F/S) Water	Publications from the lab
Acoela	Convolutriloba macropyga	Artemia & Photons	25°C Aquarium	SW
	Isodiametra pulchra	Nitzschia	20°C Incubator	SW	Martin-Duran et al. 2018, Nature; Andrikou et al 2019, PLoS Biol
	Hofstenia miamia	Artemia, Brachionus	20°C Incubator	SW
Annelida	Dimorphilus cf. gyrociliatus	Fish food	20°C Incubator	SW	Kerbl et al. 2016, EvoDevo
Nemertea	Lineus ruber	Platynereis, Mytilus	10°C Incubator	SW	Martin-Duran et al. 2018, Nature; Martin-Duran et al. 2015, EvoDevo
	Lineus longissimus	Platynereis	10°C Incubator	SW	Thiel et al 2019, Front Zool
Gastrotricha	Lepidodermella squamata	Wheat grains and milk powder	Room Temperature	FW	Fromm et al 2019, Noncoding RNA
Platyhelminthes	Macrostomum lignano	Nitzschia	20°C Incubator	SW
	Stenostomum leucops	Oat flakes	20°C Incubator	SW
Gnathifera	Epiphanes senta	Rhinomonas sp. Cryptomonas, Chlamydomonas	20°C Incubator with light	FW	Martin-Duran et al. 2018, Nature; Gąsiorowski et al 2019, Front Zool
	Adinata vaga	E. coli	Room Temperature	FW	Flot et al 2013, Nature
Nematoda	Pontonema vulgare	Clotted fish blood	10°C Incubator	SW
Tardigrada	Hypsibius exemplaris	Chlorococcum	20°C Incubator	FW
Ctenophora	Mnemiopsis leidyi	Copepods	transferred to Burkhard lab	SW	Sebe-Pedros et al 2018, Nature Ecol Evol; De Mendoza et al 2019, Nature Ecol Evol

In addition to the continuous cultures we also collect and keep for shorter periods species of Priapulida (Priapulus caudatus), Brachiopoda (Novocrania anomala), Phoronida (Phoronopsis harmeri) and Nemertodermatida (Meara stichopi).

07.10.2019