Blogs of the CEG research group

Last week on April 11th and 12th, the second Norwegian Biodiviersity and genomics conference organized by EBP-Nor took place at Forskningskparken in Oslo. The conference had interesting invited key lectures by Aoife McLysaght, Alexander Suh, Lene Lange and Olga Vinnere Petterson but also our group had a very […]

Det første ArtsDatabanken-prosjektet til vårt gruppemedlem Torsten Struck ble avsluttet med suksess denne måneden. Prosjektet var «Biodiversitet i det marine algebeltet» sammen med samarbeidspartnere fra Universitetet i Skøvde (Sverige), Universitetet i Gøteborg (Sverige), Humboldt-universitetet i Berlin (Tyskland) og Universitetet i Bonn (Tyskland). Prosjektet startet for fire år siden, […]

The first ArtsDatabanken of our group member Torsten Struck finished successfully this month. The project was “Biodiversity in the marine algae belt” together with collaborators from the University of Skøvde (Sweden), University of Gothenborg (Sweden), Humboldt-University Berlin (Germany) and University of Bonn (Germany). The project started four years […]

Today I’m going to be talking about some cute little slugs, the Onchidioideans. These pulmonate, that is, lung-bearing, gastropods are ubiquitous across the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines, favoring the intertidal. What makes so many gastropods so interesting is their torsion, the rotational steps they undergo during development resulting […]

This month, I would like to present something different from my usual worms: the nudibranchs (order nudibranchia), otherwise known as sea slugs. They are not an organism I have ever studied or worked with, but I encounter them regularly while looking for worms. And one thing I particularly […]

Hagfish, or “Slime Eels” (Slimåler in Norwegian, helpfully), are a group of deep-sea living fish that are most famous for the truly apocalyptic amounts of slime they can release when disturbed. In South Korea, they are eaten as a delicacy (and they are very nice – a bit […]

The group of the month I would like to introduce to you today is a group I have a close personal connection with. The group goes back a long way with me. I will present you the annelid family Dinophilidae. After my Diploma thesis (today Master thesis) on […]

Månedens gruppe jeg vil presentere for dere i dag, er en gruppe jeg har et nært personlig forhold til. Gruppen har en lang historie for meg. Jeg vil presentere familien til Annelida Dinophilidae. Etter å ha skrevet diplomoppgave (i dag masteroppgave) om proteiner i et virus relatert til […]

As written in our last blog of the advent calendar, we had many changes already last year with a new group leader and a new group webpage, which we is still develop further this year. However, another change becoming effective this year is that we change the name […]

Som vi skrev i forrige blogg i adventskalenderen, hadde vi mange endringer allerede i fjor, med ny gruppeleder og en ny nettside, som vi skal videreutvikle i år. En annen endring som trer i kraft i år, er at vi skifter navn på gruppen vår og for første […]

Today opens the last door of our advent calendar and we are looking forward to a few holidays and relaxing time with families and friends. In Norway, it is also a good tradition to look back at the year before Christmas, called “Juleavslutning” (Christmas Gathering). Hence, as the […]

In Summer 2023, our ANTENNA project team composed of entomologists from the University of Buea, University of Maroua and University of Oslo surveyed insect fauna of the Mozogo Gokoro National Park, Northern Cameroon. As one can see in the satellite photo, the park is located in the savannah […]

When in 1990 the fascinating novel entitled ‘Jurassic Park’ by Michael Crichton was published the idea of a re-creation of extinct species was pure fiction. Certainly, by the time many of us were wondering if de-extinction may become reality, even more so when in 1993 the Steven Spielberg […]

Only three days until Christmas! For my final post in the advent calendar, I want to introduce our readers to an essential and complex phenomenon in nature, symbiosis. In our daily language, we might casually refer to symbiosis as a mutually beneficial relationship. However, in ecological terms, symbiosis […]

As we open the door on day 20, we look at a species in the Invertomics study category in the wild, and highlight a study from 2019 that places Platynereis in a modern context, to assess its capability to act as a model organism for studies of ocean […]

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 […]

We’re fast approaching the holidays, and everyone’s academic brain is slowing down as we look forward to evenings with loved ones, good food, and seasonal traditions. As we put down our research, articles, laptops, and let the stress melt away, it can be a good time to remember […]

For the Door 18 of our advent calendar, we are traveling to Svalbard to meet a tiny Arctic bird, the little auk Alle alle. The composition of its diet is currently used by scientists to monitor the pace of climate change in the Arctic. Little auks are planktivorous, meaning they […]

For today’s advent blog post, I would like to do something a little bit different. Continuing on the theme of biodiversity, climate and environment I would like to talk about a plant that is also a very important ecosystem in the sea: seagrass. I had the chance to […]

Given this years theme of biodiversity, climate and conservation, I have decided to showcase a small part of my own MSc project for the advent calendar this year. As mentioned in a couple of the previous posts of the calendar, biodiversity is undergoing a crisis comparable only to […]

December is a time to reflect on the year that has passed, both the happy and sad, the success and the failures. But it’s also a time to look forward to the year ahead, new possibilities and opportunities. For me, this is especially important, as next time December […]

For my second advent calendar entry this year, I would like to highlight one of the most exciting papers I’ve read recently. It came out just last month in Organisms Diversity & Evolution, and is titled “A new Loriciferan, Scaberiloricus samba gen. et sp. nov., links the Higgins larva and […]

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 […]

This year the museum has started to develop a new exhibition for our zoological museum. The former “Tree of Life” exhibition is now part of the new exhibitions in the geological museum. Accordingly, this hall is unused now and shall host a new exhibition about animal biodiversity. I […]

Welcome to Door 11 of the 2023 Advent Calendar! Today, we will talk about an emblematic marine zooplankton: the krill! This is the opportunity for me to introduce my latest publication: “Comparative population transcriptomics provide new insight into the evolutionary history and adaptive potential of World Ocean Krill“, […]