Blogs of the FEZ research group

In the last two weeks of August, the ArtsDatabanken team has came together for the first big field trip. While sadly not everyone could join, seven researchers from Oslo, Berlin and Gothenburg comprised the diverse and highly motivated group. The destination was Sletvik, a biological station in the […]

The Covid-19 shutdown and restrictions halted any opportunities to learn about and contribute to on-going research at the University of Oslo (UiO). Because I’m (Pia M. Eriksen; Figure 1) considering a master’s degree in biological sciences, I have been planning and looking for ways to engage in biological […]

Joining the FEZ group as part of the University of Oslo’s (UiO) Summer Research Program, Pia M. Eriksen is a Bachelor of Biosciences student taking part in an on-going museomics (museum collection genetic studies) project. Working alongside project leader, Rita M. Austin, Pia will contribute to the exploration […]

Living in and on our bodies are trillions of microbial cells belonging to thousands of bacterial species – our microbiome. These microbes play key roles in human health, but little is known about their evolution. Here we investigated the evolutionary history of the hominid oral microbiome by analyzing […]

While museum collections contain historic materials that provide insight into various evolutionary and social aspects of the past, museums are dynamic, not only for the types of collections they contain, but also for their diverse research foci. For the Natural History Museum of Oslo and the Frontiers in […]

Until relatively recently, museum collections have been amassed and utilized to investigate the morphological variation seen within and across species to understand evolutionary change. With the advent of next generation sequencing (NGS) and improved molecular methodologies, natural history collections have become ideal sources of curated (documented) materials to […]

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 […]

Cryptic species have for long time been considered as purely a taxonomical challenge. However, in the last decade it has been shown that their recognition has also consequences for several other biological disciplines. Recently, their importance for understanding certain evolutionary processes has been highlighted. Most prominent among these […]

New research highlights and tests the limitations of dental calculus (i.e., calcified dental plaque), a microbiome substrate regularly used to reconstruct ancient foodways. Under the direction of Allison E. Mann from Clemson University, a collaborative team analyzed both synthetic and ancient dental calculus datasets to demonstrate the intrinsic […]

            Systematics can be a tricky business, and the tardigrades are no stranger to this! The study of the diversification of life often requires sorting organisms into groups of more or less closely related ones. These groups are called species, genera, families, orders, classes, phylums and kingdoms. Whilst a […]