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 answer to this question may lay in the paper I am presenting today and at some level genomes seem to be very stable. It was probably one of the most discussed papers at the museum this year. It was the topic of several journal clubs and shows […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

Many marine top-predators, among them many shark species, are particularly vulnerable to environmental changes as they are contingent on the various prey species along the food chain and their responses to shifts. The porbeagle (Lamna nasus) is a large pelagic shark that inhabits cold-temperate regions of the oceans […]

Rita M. Austin, a recent addition to the FEZ group, is working as a postdoctoral researcher exploring and optimizing the recovery of museum biomolecules in the Oslo Natural History Museum collections. Rita completed her PhD earlier this year at the University of Oklahoma, where she conducted meta- and […]

Plastic pollution has become a major threat to many marine ecosystems, and there is a need for an improved understanding of its impact on marine organisms. The Masters thesis of Gordon Breckwoldt entitled “Elasmobranchs as bioindicators? A comparative study on ingestion of plastics in the Nordic region” aimed at quantifying […]