In CEG group, we collect samples from the nature for various projects such as MeioSkag and PolyPro3 (marine invertebrates) and ANTENNA (insects). Here in the Northern Europe the best season for sampling usually is in the summer, or one might travel to an exotic location to find specific […]

All the biodiversity on our planet has originated through a series of speciation events. Speciation occurs when two lineages cease interbreeding, for one reason or another, but even after speciation the new species commonly retain the ability to hybridise for a while. Soon after speciation, the species genomes […]

The Falkland Islands is an archipelago located in the Southern Atlantic at ca. 52°S, on the Patagonian shelf about 480 km from the South American coast. The archipelago is composed of two large islands and almost 800 smaller islands. The total land area is about 12,000 km2. The […]

The recnt years have seen a hand over fist development of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and such applications affect the daily life of scientists at an increasing pace, and the ongoing development may in the near future also modify our understanding of science in general. For biologist an […]

It is the time of the year, where our group opens a door at our advents calendar again. It is my turn to open the first door. Our group is involved in many research projects involving genomic data as you can see when looking at our previous posts. […]

Det er den tiden på året hvor gruppen vår åpner en dør i adventskalenderen vår igjen. Det er min tur til å åpne den første døren. Gruppen vår er involvert i mange forskningsprosjekter som involverer genomdata, som du kan se når du ser på de tidligere innleggene våre. […]

Today opens the last door of our advent calendar and we are looking forward to a few holidays and relaxing time with families and friends. In Norway, it is also a good tradition to look back at the year before Christmas, called “Juleavslutning” (Christmas Gathering). Hence, as the […]

In Summer 2023, our ANTENNA project team composed of entomologists from the University of Buea, University of Maroua and University of Oslo surveyed insect fauna of the Mozogo Gokoro National Park, Northern Cameroon. As one can see in the satellite photo, the park is located in the savannah […]

When in 1990 the fascinating novel entitled ‘Jurassic Park’ by Michael Crichton was published the idea of a re-creation of extinct species was pure fiction. Certainly, by the time many of us were wondering if de-extinction may become reality, even more so when in 1993 the Steven Spielberg […]

Only three days until Christmas! For my final post in the advent calendar, I want to introduce our readers to an essential and complex phenomenon in nature, symbiosis. In our daily language, we might casually refer to symbiosis as a mutually beneficial relationship. However, in ecological terms, symbiosis […]

As we open the door on day 20, we look at a species in the Invertomics study category in the wild, and highlight a study from 2019 that places Platynereis in a modern context, to assess its capability to act as a model organism for studies of ocean […]

We’re fast approaching the holidays, and everyone’s academic brain is slowing down as we look forward to evenings with loved ones, good food, and seasonal traditions. As we put down our research, articles, laptops, and let the stress melt away, it can be a good time to remember […]

For the Door 18 of our advent calendar, we are traveling to Svalbard to meet a tiny Arctic bird, the little auk Alle alle. The composition of its diet is currently used by scientists to monitor the pace of climate change in the Arctic. Little auks are planktivorous, meaning they […]

For today’s advent blog post, I would like to do something a little bit different. Continuing on the theme of biodiversity, climate and environment I would like to talk about a plant that is also a very important ecosystem in the sea: seagrass. I had the chance to […]

Given this years theme of biodiversity, climate and conservation, I have decided to showcase a small part of my own MSc project for the advent calendar this year. As mentioned in a couple of the previous posts of the calendar, biodiversity is undergoing a crisis comparable only to […]

December is a time to reflect on the year that has passed, both the happy and sad, the success and the failures. But it’s also a time to look forward to the year ahead, new possibilities and opportunities. For me, this is especially important, as next time December […]

For my second advent calendar entry this year, I would like to highlight one of the most exciting papers I’ve read recently. It came out just last month in Organisms Diversity & Evolution, and is titled “A new Loriciferan, Scaberiloricus samba gen. et sp. nov., links the Higgins larva and […]

Today is the 13th of December, as today I have chosen a different aspect of “diversity” namely the diversity of tasks a PhD-student at the Natural History museum can and have to do. Being a PhD-student involves a rollercoaster of emotions and a very diverse, flexible, demanding and […]

This year the museum has started to develop a new exhibition for our zoological museum. The former “Tree of Life” exhibition is now part of the new exhibitions in the geological museum. Accordingly, this hall is unused now and shall host a new exhibition about animal biodiversity. I […]

Welcome to Door 11 of the 2023 Advent Calendar! Today, we will talk about an emblematic marine zooplankton: the krill! This is the opportunity for me to introduce my latest publication: “Comparative population transcriptomics provide new insight into the evolutionary history and adaptive potential of World Ocean Krill“, […]

For our 10th door, I want to introduce you to the diversity of peculiar and complex group of tiny creatures, the protists, and an amazing source of recently published graphics for visualizing them. My project here in FEZ group (PolyPro3) features protists as main characters and I find […]

Conservation of biodiversity is increasingly recognized as an important challenge, and numerous reports have addressed the ongoing loss of biodiversity and pinpointed the potential consequences. Even a sixth, man-induced mass extinction has been intensively discussed (e.g., https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-mass-extinction-and-are-we-facing-a-sixth-one.html). Frequently, the focus of such discussions is on endangered iconic species […]

As we open day 8 on our Advent Calendar, I bring an urgent message. Maths Can Be Fun, Too! The Christmas period and the advent calendar gives us a great chance to talk in more general terms about our research. Here at FEZ many of our ongoing research […]

While in my first contribution to this Advent Calendar series, in the second I have decided to comment in an aspect that, in my view, should shape the future of our research during the incoming 2024. That is, the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in biological sciences (and not […]

For this year’s Advent Calendar, we’ve decided to theme ourselves around climate change and conservation. For my first blog entry, I’ve decided to write more of a background about the general need for marine biodiversity conservation, and some opinions on who should care, and why. I will then […]