We started this blog with an advent calendar for 2020 summarizing the highlights of our research year and presenting ourselves. Since we have continued that tradition.
Category: Advent calendar
Catching up! Door 22 – Progresses and challenges during 2021
Everyone has missed a day of ticking off advent as some point! Making today a two-for-one post day! Enjoy! By Alberto Valero-Gracia This year has been a bit peculiar for most of us. However, as with most of our colleagues at the NHM, the FEZ group has always […]
Door 23: The origin of the Islandic beetle-fauna
By Vetle Løveng Since last year’s entry, I have yet to come to a conclusion on the origin of the Islandic beetle-fauna. All the collecting and lab work is done, what remains is the bioinformatic analysis. The dataset that was produced is fairly comprehensive, and hopefully there is […]
Door 21 – Persistent considerations for molecular analyses of museum specimens
Many factors come into play when making decisions about using museum specimens, especially for molecular applications. As a museum scientist that utilizes molecular methodologies, I am constantly conducting experiments in my mind to try to run through how each step and/or technique will (or won’t) get me to […]
What’s in a Postdoc? Life inside the gears of the academic machine
When we head home for the holiday period, I’m sure many of us will end up in chatting away to a relative or family friend we haven’t seen in far too long, only to be confronted with that ever-present question of: “What do you do for a job […]
Identification of African staphylinid beetles
Identification of African staphylinid beetles can be challenging. Many genera have never been revised, and descriptions of their species are scattered in different papers, published by different authors at different times, often without illustrations or comparison among related species. Staphylinid beetle genus Philonthus is represented in the Afrotropical […]
Finishing the tale of stone
In last year’s advents calendar, we presented the Master theses of two students. One of the students, Stian Aleksander Helsem has successfully defended his thesis this year. I still remember the first time we met. He came into my office being interested in writing his Master thesis with […]
Door 17 – The teaching portfolio of the FEZ group
Academic teaching is a central task and a key element of the self-conception of universities. Yes, teaching is time consuming and needs commitment of the academic teacher. But it is also highly rewarding. All FEZ members are highly dedicated to providing excellent training to the next generation biologists. […]
Out of all things, why marine invertebrates?
By now, everyone knows that a lot of us in FEZ are working with marine invertebrates. But why? Aren’t these just weird worms that do nothing but crawl on the ocean floor? Not really, and I’ll try to explain why. From the 34 phyla of the Animal kingdom, […]
Door 15: Cryptic species and public outreach
An essential aspect of doing research and working as a scientist is to communicate to the larger public interesting and important results. Outreach to the public is extremely important, as it creates awareness and fascination as well as it facilitates learning and understanding. For many, the topics we […]
Field Trip to Sylt
By Alberto Valero-Gracia In my second post of the advent calendar, I would like to share with you some of the pictures I’ve taken during our field trip to Sylt (Germany), a very nice island with sandy beaches in which a lot of tradition on the study of […]