A visit, a small boat, a worm = a new record of an invasive species and a paper

In October 2018, Vasily Radashevsky from the Russian Academy of Sciences briefly visited our collection to go through the material of Spionidae, marine worms of the phyla Annelida, the segmented worms. Vasily is very enthusiastic about spionids in all there facets and he is one of the world’s […]

Door 13: Christmas Excitement at the Museum

“On the thirteenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me”…an unbridled curiosity of organismal diversity and their relationships, historical contexts, and the natural world that has directly informed my career. Me too! While my fascination of the natural world isn’t directly related to the holidays, I […]

Maths and Models: The Mechanics of Invertomics

As the nights get longer and the end of the year draws ever nearer, the FEZ advent calendar gives us the opportunity to introduce what we’ve been working on this year to everyone. My role in the group is tied to the Invertomics project, the quest for a […]

Exploring coastal beetle fauna of the Sakhalin island

Most species of the hydraenid beetle genus Ochthebius are associated with fresh water habitats e.g. creek margins. One clade, the vandykei group, succeeded in a very different habitat, fissures and crevices of the supralittoral coastal rocks on both sides of the northern Pacific. One species of this group […]

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 […]

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 […]