This month I will present to you a very small phylum of animals – both in size and in number of species. The phylum Cycliophora, which means the ring-bearer, comprises exactly one genus and two described species. These species are about 350 µm in body length, which is […]

Denne måneden vil jeg presentere en svært liten dyregruppe – både i størrelse og i antall arter. Cycliophora, som betyr ringbærer, består av nøyaktig én slekt og to beskrevne arter. Disse artene er ca. 350 µm i kroppslengde, noe som er mindre enn en halv millimeter og omtrent […]

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 […]

Today, I want to introduce a fascinating group of worms that are particularly relevant during the Christmas season. Known as Christmas tree worms, these marine annelids belong to the family Serpulidae. They are renowned for their radiolar crowns and their habit of dwelling within calcareous tubes attached on […]

Cover image: Metchnikovella incurvata, a parasite of a bristle worm infecting gregarine. Picture from Galindo et al. 2018, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evy205 For this month’s group, I want to present you another group of organisms I am currently working with in my postdoc project PolyPro3 here at NHM Oslo. This is […]

This month I wish to present a group that I have been working on for nearly 30 years, the angiosperm genus Viola which comprises violets and pansies (Figure 1). Our group recently produced a monograph of the genus (Marcussen et al. 2022) – the first comprehensive (and very […]

This month, we will present to you the boring worms. These are worms of different genera, which belong to the polychaete family Spionidae. Polychaetes are also called bristle worms as the often have a large number (poly) of bristles (chaetae) on their segments. The family Spionidae is a […]

Denne måneden vil vi presentere de “boring” ormene. Dette er ormer av forskjellige slekter, som tilhører polychaete-familien Spionidae. Polychaeter kalles også flerbørstemarker, ettersom de ofte har et stort antall (poly) børster (chaetae) på segmentene sine. Familien Spionidae er en familie som omfatter mer enn 600 arter i mer […]

This month, I wish to present a very beautiful invertebrate phyla, namely Phoronida – also known as Horseshoe worms.   The phylum is fairly small, with 13 recognized living species, divided into two genera; Phoronis and Phoronopsis. They are found within the phylogenetic grouping of Lophotrochozoa, more specific […]

The walrus (Odobena rosmarus) is certainly one of the most fascinating arctic and enigmatic marine mammal species. It is the enormous size of the animal (it is the largest pinniped in the Northern Hemisphere) and the enormous tusks that attract our attention. Walruses are distributed in the circumpolar […]