Here we blog about our research on taxonomy with a special emphasis on cryptic species, which is at present done by PhD and Master theses.
Category: Taxonomy
Raising the treasure of the collections for barcoding
The Biodiversity Genomic Europe (BGE) project has three streams dealing with the biodiversity crisis. In the blog so far, we have mostly presented about one stream, the European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) one concentrating on the genomic side of the project. However, another stream is concentrating on the […]
Door 13: The diversity of tasks for a PhD-student at NHM
Today is the 13th of December, as today I have chosen a different aspect of “diversity” namely the diversity of tasks a PhD-student at the Natural History museum can and have to do. Being a PhD-student involves a rollercoaster of emotions and a very diverse, flexible, demanding and […]
Beetle hunt in Japan – spring 2023
One of the best things with being a PhD-student at the Natural History Museum is the chance to do fieldwork. Most of our group members are doing fieldwork regularly to collect new material and to expand our collections. Unfortunately, the pandemic put a hold on many such plans, […]
Systematics and ecosystem function – can they go together?
In the summer of last year, Zoologica Scripta organized an international symposium around the topic of ‘The role of systematics for understanding ecosystem functions’ in the premises of Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in Oslo. The symposium aimed at offering a forum for exploring and discussing trends […]
Group of the month: Parergodrilidae (Annelida)
This month’s ”Group of the month” is a bit of shameless self-promotion. I will present an animal group today, where we conduct quite a lot of research on. However, it is nonetheless really interesting and worth to learn more about it. The family Parergodrilidae belongs to the annelids […]
The taxonomic challenge of the annelid genus Perinereis (Nereididae) just gets larger
Today, our paper about Perinereis species from the intertidal coasts of the Red Sea, Gulf of Suez and Suez Canal lead by Asmaa Haris Elgetany was published in ZooKeys. It is her third paper from her internship at our group and fittingly we are describing three new species […]
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 […]
Stygocapitella – an incredibly old worm found beneath your beach towel
Species of the genus Stygocapitella belong to the ringed worms, also known as Annelida. Annelids are worms like earthworms, lugworm or christmas tree worms, but also leeches or very tiny worms living in the spaces between the sand grains, called the interstitium. Such an interstitial group of worms […]
December 7: How are the Aegialites-beetles?
A year has passed since the last update on my project related to the Aegialites-beetles. Throughout the year, the project has moved slowly forward with some minor corona-bumps in the way. The intended fieldwork to Japan is still postponed, but trough Vladimir, we have managed to get a […]
Bad apples and a marine worm – sometimes they go together
During his PhD Jose was interested in the evolution of the cryptic species complexes in the annelid genus Stygocapitella, which occurs at sandy beaches around the world. Part of his thesis also comprised population-genomic studies to understand the underlying genomic background of morphological stasis. During the phylogenomic studies […]