We all know a worm. We all know a snail. Or at least, we think we do.But nature often blurs the lines we draw so confidently. In the case of vermetid snails, also known as “worm snails,” appearances can be deceiving. These creatures look like worms but are, […]

Drawing a shark could be fun, so why not following a step-by-step tutorial for it? As many suggest, let`s start by deconstruct your soon to be shark in simple geometrical figures. A triangle can be the head, a dorsal fin or a tail. One or two rectangles for […]

The phylum Entoprocta (also called Kamptozoa) are known as the nicking worm. Globally, 260 species are known to date and 30 in Norway. The individuals are small with a body size of 0.5 – 7 mm. However, besides solitary species, other species build colonies and these can be […]

Etter Stian hadde vi en annen masterstudent, Pia, som konsentrerte seg om et rent bioinformatisk tema i vår gruppe. Hun forsvarte i går sin avhandling med tittelen «Evaluating the Applicability of Macrosynteny as a Phylogenetic Trait Based on an Exploration of Spiralia» (Evaluering av makrosyntenis anvendbarhet som et […]

After Stian, we had another Master student, Pia, who concentrated on a purely bioinformatic topic in our group. She successfully defend here thesis with the title “Evaluating the Applicability of Macrosynteny as a Phylogenetic Trait Based on an Exploration of Spiralia” yesterday. Like Stian, Pia is also moving […]

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 […]

Featured photo: Euphausia superba, the Antarctic krill. Photo by Professor Dr. habil. Uwe Kils, uploaded to en.wikipedia.org. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Tiny but mighty, krill are among the most abundant animals on Earth and their collective role is […]

Cover image: Rhytidocystis polygordiae from the intestines of a polychaete Polygordius sp. (Scale bar = 15 μm) from Leander & Ramey, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1550-7408.2006.00109.x For this month’s group, I’m introducing another group of enigmatic protists, the family Rhytidocystidae. They belong to the phylum Apicomplexa, which is known for many […]

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 […]

Susanna successfully defended her Master thesis last week. In her project, she wanted to address the evolution of the mitochondrial genome order of hairybellies (Gastrotricha). Gastrotricha are very tiny and flat animals, which are usually not longer than 1 mm. Nonetheless, they can have very delicate structures on […]