When you think about genomic research and sequencing genomes like it is the goal of the Earth Biogenome Project (EBP), Biodiversity Genomics Europe (BGE) or InvertOmics you have in mind all these new fancy technologies called Next-Generation, Third-generation or High-through-put sequencing. All these amazing advances in technologies allowing […]

Rotifers, or “wheel animalcules”, are an interesting group of microscopic animals (size between 0.1 and 1mm in length) commonly found both in fresh water and terrestrial habitats; although less number of species have been described, marine rotifer species exist too. In regards with their classification, rotifers belong to […]

            A few weeks ago, the FEZ group produced another new paper, this time in Evolutionary Applications, titled “Identifying and addressing methodology incongruence in phylogenetics: a review”. It’s actually the first review I’ve ever been involved in writing and was a big change from my usual research work. […]

The last years have seen an increasing number of sequencing consortia being established in support of the Earth Biogenome Project’s (EBP) goal of sequencing the genomes of each eukaryotic species. In Europe, these consortia are, for example, Darwin Tree of Life (DToL), EBP-Norway (EBP-Nor), ATLAsea or Biodiversity Genomics […]

Last week I was lucky enough to have another paper come out, this time in BMC Bioinformatics: “nRCFV: a new, dataset-size-independent metric to quantify compositional heterogeneity in nucleotide and amino acid datasets” It’s a less elegant title than usual, I’ll admit! In addition, for a biological paper, there […]

What is so fascinating or even better said the beauty of working with tiny worms? Many might be curious about this, when they meet researchers like me. I would suggest to look at the marvelous wonders of the hairybellies, the phylum Gastrotricha, and you will understand why it […]

After two years of hard work and many meetings, we can officially announce that the Biodiversity Genomics Europe consortium has started this month. The road to this consortium at the European level started actually from two points. It is a collaboration between two of the most ambitious biological […]

Gnathostomuida, also known as “lesser jaw worms”, is a phylum of about 100 described species of minute marine worms. The first gnathostomulid was discovered in 1928, in the fine sand of Kiel (Germany), by Adolf Remane. Later, Riedl (1969) elevated the animal group to the rank of phylum. […]

Written by Line Willersrud and Rita M. Austin The phylum Chordata contains the three subphylums, Tunicata, Cephalochordata and Vertebrata. Vertebrata, which includes humans and all other mammals, birds, fishes, amphibians and reptiles, are differentiated from other chordates by having an enclosed vertebral column, the backbone. But inclusion in […]

Another paper involving a FEZ group member, this time about silk from a marine crustacean group! What can we learn from the history of the silk of the Tanaids, and how can it help us make better materials in the future?