Door 9: Bowhead whales – giants of Arctic waters

Bowhead whales (scientific name Balaena mysticetus) are baleen whales that spend the entire life in the Arctic and subarctic waters. They are named after their characteristic triangular skull that allows them to break through ice for breathing. They are 15-20 meters long and may weigh up to 100 […]

A new paper on Christmas tree worms from the Persian Gulf and the possible first case of heteroplasmy in Annelida

In pre-Covid times, Samaneh Pazoki has visited our lab for 6 months from Iran as part of her PhD. In the meantime, she has successfully defended her PhD and we could already publish a second paper as part of her stay her. She is interested in Serpulidae from […]

Meet the critters from the Artsdatabanken project

After introducing the Artsdatabanken project and telling about our summer collection trips (Trøndelag and Oslo), it is time to present the six invertebrate groups that we are working with. From star ascidians to Christmas-tree worms, this seems to be the adequate time of the year to get to […]

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 […]

Field Trip to Roscoff

By Alberto Valero-Gracia In this blog post I will briefly comment about our first field trip outside Norway, a trip done to sample at the Station Biologique de Roscoff (France). During this trip (3rd – 17th of September, 2021), my supervisor, Prof. Torsten Struck, and I, were able […]

A US-Norwegian banker, Hawai’i and a spider genome – How do they come together for biodiversity research?

Written by Jose Cerca (former member of our group and now as a guest author on this blog) Spiders are some of the most charismatic animal lineages. Despite this, there are only a handful spider genomes available. This is likely due to their highly repeated and heterozygous genomes. […]

Door 5: Modern DNA Sequencing Meets Oslo Natural History Museum Wet Collections: Testing the Impact of Age and Formalin

Pia Merete Eriksen, Rita M. Austin In June 2021, I, Pia M Eriksen, conducted a research project under the guidance of Rita M Austin to sequence herptile type specimen DNA using in-house sequencing techniques, supported by Oslo Natural History Museum and UiO: Life Sciences. Now, 5 months later, […]

Science From Lockdown: Advent Calendar December 4th 2021

So we’re in advent again! I arrived last December to a chilly Oslo, and it feels like the year has flown by. For us, and I imagine for many of our readers too, the year has been characterised by rolling lockdowns and the steady pace towards vaccination. But […]

Staphylinid beetles of Ebu Forest, Cameroon

In June 2021 Vladimir Gusarov made a field trip to Cameroon. The purpose of the trip was to survey the staphylinid beetle fauna of the Ebu forest, collect samples for student projects and train a student from the University of Buea, Ms Grace M’ayuk Ojong-Nkongho. Ebu forest covers […]

Biodiversity research in the Genomics era

Sequencing technology has changed in research in biology tremendously and probably much more than any other technology before. The development from radioactivity-based to nowadays single-molecule real-time sequencing of tens of thousands of base pairs in a single go in the last three decades is on par with the […]