A portrait of Maddie Frey crouching down in a mudflat, smiling slightly at the camera — Madeline Frey, then an undergraduate student at U.C. Davis, in the mud flats of Bodega Harbor. Frey was studying at the U.C. Davis Bodega Marine Lab when she found 34 species of nemertean, or ribbon worms, including 11 new species in the rocky shorelines, sandy beaches and mud flats around Bodega Bay. Photo by Jackie Sones

Student discovers 11 new ribbon worm species in Bodega Bay

by Mary Callahan, Press Democrat
September 06, 2024

Maddie Frey was still in the early days of her fellowship at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Reserve when she grabbed a bucket and trowel and headed out to the shoreline behind the university’s marine lab near Bodega Head.

A photo mosaic of nemerteans, or ribbon worms, found along the Sonoma Coast near the U.C. Davis Bodega Marine Lab. The nemerteans in boxes 2, 4, 7 and 11, counting left to right and top to bottom, are brand new species not previously documented. Photos courtesy of Madeline Frey and Eric Sanford

Her adviser, Eric Sanford, was tempted to suggest she focus her search for ribbon worms elsewhere ― somewhere not as well studied as the beach 100 feet beyond the venerable lab’s door. But not wanting to quash her enthusiasm, he bit his tongue.

It was a fortuitous choice.

On that very day, at the edge of Horseshoe Cove ― “literally in her first scoop of sand,” Sanford said ― Frey found exactly what she was searching for. It was a 10-centimeter-long ribbon worm, or nemertean, never before documented in the scientific records.

The nemertean, in the genus Riserius, was the first of what would be 11 brand new ribbon worms Frey, then 20, and Sanford found by the end of that summer― species still unnamed and unknown to science before they submitted them for genetic sequencing and morphological assessment.

As recently reported in the science journal ZooKeys, Frey and her co-authors ultimately identified 34 individual species of nemertean found around Bodega Bay, highlighting the diversity still to be found in nature and bringing new attention to weird and amazing wildlife often overlooked by tide-poolers and even the science community.