Written by Hilda Jakin Osei-Mireku What a “zombie fungus” and a ghost moth larva can teach us about patience, transformation, and waiting during Advent Advent is a season of waiting, anticipation, and preparation. While many of us count down the days to Christmas, high in regions such as […]

In a previous blogpost, I asked the question how long species are able to form hybrids after their lineages diverged — and I showed that certain species of flowering plants (angiosperms) retain this ability for at least 50 million years (Ma). This question is of particular significance because […]

While working in the Museum collections, I came across a small cardboard box containing few scattered bones. In that moment, I found kind of amusing that such a tiny box contained the remains of the largest living animal: the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus Linnaeus, 1758). Whales have captured […]

Annelida, or segmented worms, is a vast and diverse group of metazoans of over 20000 species that includes, amongst others, earthworms, leeches, echiurids, sipunculids and polychaetes. With over 300 species the polychaete family Cirratulidae is one of the most species-rich and common in benthic assemblages in a variety […]

Annelida, eller segmenterte ormer, er en stor og mangfoldig gruppe av metazoer med over 20 000 arter, som blant annet omfatter meitemark, igler, echiurider, sipunculider og polychaeter. Med over 300 arter er polychaete-familien Cirratulidae en av de mest artsrike og vanlige i bentiske samfunn i en rekke habitater. […]

The marine biodiversity of Europe is generally considered well known comparison to other regions, especially of the global South. However, also in European waters, some habitats and regions have been scarcely studied and many species could remain to be discovered and described. This has been shown, for example, […]

Den marine biologiske mangfoldigheten i Europa anses generelt å være godt kjent sammenlignet med andre regioner, spesielt i den globale sørlige halvkule. Imidlertid er også i europeiske farvann noen habitater og regioner knapt studert, og mange arter kan fortsatt være uoppdagede og ubeskrevne. Dette er for eksempel vist […]

Hvorfor er denne gruppa interessant å studere?Myrfiolgruppa (Viola seksjon Plagiostigma, underseksjon Stolonosae; Violaceae) er ei av flere artergrupper i den nordlige tempererte sonen som diversifiserte som respons på global nedkjøling de siste ~5 millioner år. Å studere artene i denne gruppa gir derfor mulighet til å belyse de […]

Why is this group interesting to study? The marsh violet group (Viola sect. Plagiostigma, subsect. Stolonosae, in part; Violaceae) is one of numerous north-temperate species groups that diversified in response to climate cooling in the last ~5 million years. Thus, studying this group has the potential to elucidate […]

Let me introduce you to the Group of the Month for March: A fungus! At this point you are probably thinking to yourself: “Wait a minute, that’s not a fungus. That’s clearly just a beetle…” And for the most part, you’d be right! Let’s zoom in a bit […]

La meg presentere månedens gruppe for mars: En sopp! Nå tenker du sikkert for deg selv: «Vent, det der er ikke en sopp. Det er helt klart bare en bille…» Og det er i og for seg riktig! La oss zoome litt lengre inn: Tankerekken fortsetter: «Hmm… Det […]

I forrige uke publiserte vi en artikkel om meiofauna og hvorfor det er viktig å studere dem, og hvilke vitenskapelige spørsmål som bør tas opp i neste omgang. Artikkelen «Fundamental questions in meiofauna research highlight how small but ubiquitous animals can improve our understanding of Nature» ble publisert […]

Last week, we published an paper on meiofauna and why it is important to study them and which scientific questions should be addressed next. The paper “Fundamental questions in meiofauna research highlight how small but ubiquitous animals can improve our understanding of Nature” was published in Communications Biology. […]

The Biodiversity Genomics Europe (BGE) Project is a community-driven effort funded by the EU to establish a framework for coordinating DNA barcoding and genome sequencing across Europe. As part of the genome stream of BGE, reference genomes from species from critical European biodiversity are sequenced. An important task […]

Biodiversity Genomics Europe (BGE) er et fellesskapsdrevet prosjekt finansiert av EU for å etablere et rammeverk for koordinering av DNA-strekkoding og genomsekvensering i hele Europa. Som en del av genomstrømmen i BGE sekvenseres referansegenomer fra arter fra kritisk europeisk biologisk mangfold. En viktig oppgave i dette arbeidet var […]

A visit to the Adelaide Botanic Garden is certainly high up on the to-do list of a biologist visiting the capital of South Australia. In December 2024, a couple of days before the Australian midsummer, I had the pleasure to visit the Adelaide Botanic Garden and explored the […]

I’m three out of four semesters deep into an MSc, meaning that in a few short months I will be delivering a completed thesis, with detailed results and an in-depth discussion. I’ve had a timeline laid out since the very beginning and am largely on track. That isn’t […]

Following the example of Pia’s post about the gift of collaboration, I will introduce you to a side project I did with two colleagues from a different research group at today’s door. It started with a strange sighting from a friend: a bird that looked like a species […]

It is always a pleasure if international scientific cooperations deliver exciting results. This was the case with my cooperation with colleagues at the University Hasselt, Belgium. The study was a key component of the PhD thesis of Armando J. Cruz‑Laufer who also coordinated the drafting of the scientific […]

Cover picture by Sue Flood Last time, I wrote about how glacial-isolation caused the divergence of a small population of ringed seals in the Ilulissat Icefjord, West Greenland. The text ended with a final consideration on the importance of developing research plan to retrieve molecular data for Arctic […]

Earlier this year in September Ivanković and colleagues published the results of a study coordinated by the research group of Jochen Rink at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany and presented highly improved genomes of the four planarian flatworm species from the genus Schmidtea. These […]

CEG research group members Torsten Struck and myself are coordinating the task of Community Sampling, within WP5 of the the EU-funded BioGenomics Europe project. We have now completed our task, well before the deadline of February 2025 set by BGE. Our task began with annoucing two public calls, […]

Whenever you hear the word fungi, chances are high that you are thinking of the colourful variation of mushroom fruiting bodies popping up in high abundance during the fall. Or maybe you’re thinking of the vast webs of underground mycelia that most fungi produce. For some, the frightening […]

Når du hører ordet sopp, er sjansen stor for at du tenker på den fargerike variasjonen av soppfruktlegemer som popper opp i store mengder om høsten. Eller kanskje du tenker på de enorme nettene av underjordiske mycel som de fleste sopper produserer. For noen er kanskje den skremmende […]

For most people, discovering new species seems like an extraordinary event, something that happens only once in a lifetime or at least something very rare. However, for some groups of organisms, particularly understudied ones, it’s actually very easy to come across a new species to science and perhaps […]