Fieldtrip to Japan October 2019

During the first 10 days of October in collaboration to Dr Rie Nakano, the renowned author of several books on the opisthobranch molluscs of Japan, we spend four days sampling in Hachijo Island a remote small place about 250 Km south of Tokyo and another four days in Sagami Bay, the type locality of many Japanese opisthobranch gastropods described by the famous malacologist Kikutaro Baba. Overall, we collected circa 230 lots and over 100 species which will now integrate the scientific collections of the Museum and will be available for study by researchers and students.

Before going on the field for sampling we spend two days at the University of Tokyo working with Professor Yasunori Kano, which in recent years has amassed and curated a large and probably the most important collection of molluscs from the deep-sea around Japan. At Professor Kano’s laboratory we had the opportunity to sort out the cephalaspidean gastropods which will be now the focus of a dedicated study and part of them will integrate the PhD thesis of Justine Siegwald about the diversity of the genus Scaphander and speciation patterns in the deep sea.