Arctic skate Amblyraja hyperborea preys on remarkably large glacial eelpouts Lycodes frigidus.

During scientific surveys on the continental slopes north-west of Spitsbergen and off north-east Greenland (c. 600 and 1000 m depths), two female Arctic skates Amblyraja hyperborea were caught while swallowing extraordinary large individuals of glacial eelpout Lycodes frigidus. The total length (LT) of the prey constituted 50 and 80% of the LT of the skates, which reveal that A. hyperborea are capable predators of fishes of surprisingly large relative size.

Molecular and morphological variation in saddled fathead sculpins (Psychrolutidae: Cottunculus) of the north-east Atlantic Ocean, with a synonymy of three species.

On the basis of 104 individuals of Cottunculus from the Norwegian coast, the Barents Sea, Svalbard and north-east Greenland waters, this paper evaluates the descriptive taxonomic characters of three species Cottunculus sadko, Cottunculus microps and Cottunculus konstantinovi and links the character variation to genetic characterizations. Eleven morphological characters used as diagnostic characters in the original descriptions of these species were analysed in pair-wise character comparisons. All characters show cross-species traits when in combination with each other, and all individuals show traits of more than one of the species. Partial cytochrome oxidase c subunit I (coI) gene sequences from 21 individuals, covering the morphological variation among the specimens, show little variation among the individuals. From these results, it is concluded that the descriptive characters do not support the maintenance of more than one species. It is recommended that C. microps remains the name for this species, with C. sadko and C. konstantinovi as junior synonyms.

Lack of taxonomic information from parietal spine size invalidates subspecies in the Atlantic hookear sculpin Artediellus atlanticus.

An analysis of 107 individuals of Atlantic hookear sculpin Artediellus atlanticus from the Barents Sea-Svalbard region and from north-east Greenland shows that the state of the parietal spines, although not randomly distributed geographically, occurs sympatrically. They do not diagnostically describe populations. They are therefore inept for subspecies delimitation into Artediellus atlanticus atlanticus, Artediellus atlanticus corniger and Artediellus atlanticus europaeus. Sympatric occurrence of parietal spine states called for a molecular approach to look for differences at a species level. Sequencing the mitochondrial genes, cytochrome oxidase c subunit I (coI) and cytochrome b (cytb), shows no difference between individuals with different parietal spine size. Thus, there is no evidence of the spine states representing species-level variation. The study shows that parietal spine size has no taxonomic information for this species. The patterns of variation in parietal spine size differ to some degree between the sexes.