Beetles, sheep and the Faroes

Between different lockdowns and corona restrictions, we were lucky enough to go to the Faroe Islands. The field work at the Faroe Islands was an important link for describing the Staphylinidae arrival to Iceland, given the Faroes Islands are being placed roughly midway between mainland Europe and Iceland. […]

Huge and endangered

Øystein and Lutz have worked for many years together with international partners on the genetic differentiation of bowhead whale stocks with particular emphasis on the Spitsbergen stock. The Svalbard bowhead whale population is currently classified as ‘Endangered’ by The International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Extensive hunting, […]

Combining group fun with genomic research

The aim of our InvertOmics project is to obtain high-quality genomes for different spiralian/lophotrochozoan phyla at the level required by the Earth BioGenome Project. Therefore, we will use the new PacBio HiFi technology. However, this required high-molecular-weight DNA at really high quality and in high amount. This is […]

Coming from Japan all the way to Norway

A new Postdoctoral Research Fellow has arrived in our lab this month. Over the next three years, James will be hard at work understanding the relationships between various different groups of flatworms, roundworms and molluscs. However, for the last two years, James has been up to something completely […]

Teaching in Covid times

FEZ members are also involved in academic teaching. This year, as for many others in the world it was special experience due to Covid. We will provide her an example of two Master level courses. This spring many members of the group as well as others from the […]

The intertidal beetle genus Aegialites

Last year, Marianne started her PhD-project in the FEZ-group. Marianne kick-started her project with a fieldtrip to the east-coast of USA to collect beetles. The beetles, which live in the cracks and crevices on rocky shores, proved to be difficult to find. With hammer and chisel, she managed […]

Meiofauna occuring at public swimming beaches on Nesodden

The last UiO:Life Science summer project in our group was conducted by Mari Dønnum Klausen. She investigated the distribution of meiofauna organisms along public swimming beaches on Nesodden. She herself wrote about her project on her final poster: “To be able to understand human impact on ecological systems, […]

Training in African Insect Biodiversity

The recently started FEZ project ANTENNA received funding from Diku, the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education. The network of seven universities, one research institute and one NGO, in Norway and seven countries across Africa, will provide training in modern DNA-based molecular methods […]

Never Cry Wolf

Mikkel Sinding did a joint (cotutelle) PhD at the Natural History Museums Copenhagen and Oslo. Øystein and Lutz were his supervisors on the Norwegian side. Mikkel defended his thesis entitled “Never Cry Wolf-The origin and genomic history of the indigenous Greenland dogs and wolves” in December 2017. Since […]

Beetles on the Falkland islands

Field work is an important activity for many researchers at the museum. Every field trip contributes to development of the museum collection and adds species that the collection has been lacking. Sampling in poorly studied parts of the world results in discovery of many species unknown to science. […]