Published in Zoologica Scripta: link here. The paper named “Insight into the phylogeny of the intertidal beetle genus Aegialites (Coleoptera, Salpingidae)“, by Marianne N. Haugen, Vladimir I. Gusarov, Derek S. Sikes & Torsten H. Struck is now published in Zoologica Scripta. This paper, which is an important part […]

In a previous blogpost, I asked the question how long species are able to form hybrids after their lineages diverged — and I showed that certain species of flowering plants (angiosperms) retain this ability for at least 50 million years (Ma). This question is of particular significance because […]

Drawing a shark could be fun, so why not following a step-by-step tutorial for it? As many suggest, let`s start by deconstruct your soon to be shark in simple geometrical figures. A triangle can be the head, a dorsal fin or a tail. One or two rectangles for […]

I forrige uke publiserte vi en artikkel om meiofauna og hvorfor det er viktig å studere dem, og hvilke vitenskapelige spørsmål som bør tas opp i neste omgang. Artikkelen «Fundamental questions in meiofauna research highlight how small but ubiquitous animals can improve our understanding of Nature» ble publisert […]

Last week, we published an paper on meiofauna and why it is important to study them and which scientific questions should be addressed next. The paper “Fundamental questions in meiofauna research highlight how small but ubiquitous animals can improve our understanding of Nature” was published in Communications Biology. […]

Species evolution is often depicted as linear, neatly separated branches of a tree, an oversimplification that fails to capture the true complexity of evolutionary history. This is especially true for human evolution, where the prevailing belief has been that the modern human population that emerged from Africa was […]

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 we open day 8 on our Advent Calendar, I bring an urgent message. Maths Can Be Fun, Too! The Christmas period and the advent calendar gives us a great chance to talk in more general terms about our research. Here at FEZ many of our ongoing research […]

The mitochondria is the organelle within the cell which is regarded as the cells “power house”. This is because they play a crucial role in energy production through oxidative phosphorylation. Within the mitochondria, the mitochondrial genomes, also referred to as mitogenomes, are found. The mitogenomes are small circular […]

Yesterday, we published an preprint on the meiofauna and why it is important to study them and which scientific questions should be addressed next. The publication involved 42 researchers from 44 institutions all around the world. The research was initiated and led by Alejandro Martínez and Diego Fontaneto […]

Sometimes, work and home come together in ways you don’t expect. I decided to get into aquascaping this summer, growing underwater plants and keeping nutrient cycles alive and self-sustaining between the soil, the plants, and small invertebrates. In my research, I was surprised to come across a little […]

            A few weeks ago, the FEZ group produced another new paper, this time in Evolutionary Applications, titled “Identifying and addressing methodology incongruence in phylogenetics: a review”. It’s actually the first review I’ve ever been involved in writing and was a big change from my usual research work. […]

Last week I was lucky enough to have another paper come out, this time in BMC Bioinformatics: “nRCFV: a new, dataset-size-independent metric to quantify compositional heterogeneity in nucleotide and amino acid datasets” It’s a less elegant title than usual, I’ll admit! In addition, for a biological paper, there […]

Yesterday, Jørgen Hansen Starholm defended his Master thesis “Solving phylogenetic relationships within the Rove beetle genus Aleochara (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) by utilizing a novel approach based on High Throughput Sequencing” successfully. The purpose of the thesis was to infer a phylogeny of Aleochara based on more nuclear markers and […]

As commented on a previous post of this 2022 Frontiers in Evolutionary Zoology advent calendar I have decided to briefly present you three works: a research paper, a researcher interview, and a book. Today, it is the turn of posting one of my favorite scientific books of the year. At least in life […]

The arthropod subphylum of Chelicerata are made up of three classes containing extant orders: Pycnogonida (Pantopoda: the sea spiders), Merostomata (Xiphosura: the horseshoe crabs) and the diverse class of Arachnida. Although the relationships between these three have proven difficult to untangle, the historical perception of arachnid monophyly has […]

Although frequently neglected, animals and fungi share a close evolutionary relationship. Despite the huge differences in morphology, ecology, life history and behaviour they represent the two major lineages within Opisthokonta, a clade that was earlier referred to as the “Fungi/Metazoa group” in the Tree of Life. You may […]

What is so fascinating or even better said the beauty of working with tiny worms? Many might be curious about this, when they meet researchers like me. I would suggest to look at the marvelous wonders of the hairybellies, the phylum Gastrotricha, and you will understand why it […]

After two years of hard work and many meetings, we can officially announce that the Biodiversity Genomics Europe consortium has started this month. The road to this consortium at the European level started actually from two points. It is a collaboration between two of the most ambitious biological […]

Usually I work with marine invertebrates from a group called Lophotrochozoa, which comprises among others mollusks, segmented worms and flatworms. However, the paper featured in this blog is the first of several papers to come on insects. While the others will come from Marianne’s PhD project on Aegialites […]

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 […]

Last week marked the release of a new paper by one member of the Invertomics group, James Fleming, in a field that seems quite far apart from the mission of the lab! "Eye-transcriptome and genome-wide sequencing for Scolecophidia: implications for inferring the visual system of the ancestral snake" was part of a long term collaboration...

Our calendar is coming to its close and at the second-to-last day it features two Master projects, which started this year working with annelids, which are both completely computer-based making use of the SAGA supercomputer infrastructure through the command line, and all analytical programs used are monitored through […]

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 […]