Studies of reproductive isolation between homoploid hybrid species and their parent species have rarely been carried out. Here we investigate reproductive barriers between a recently recognized hybrid bird species, the ...

Spatio-temporal density-dependent processes are crucial regulatory factors for natural populations. However, there is a lack of studies addressing spatial density-dependence in fish growth. A previous investigation has ...

One mechanism by which marine organisms may respond to climate shifts is range shifts. The corkwing wrasse (Symphodus melops) is a temperate fish species, inhabiting the coasts of Europe, that show strong indications of ...

Background: Today, there are more than a hundred times as many sequenced prokaryotic genomes than were present in the year 2000. The economical sequencing of genomic DNA has facilitated a whole new approach to microbial ...

This study consists of two parts. In the first part, a method of measuring cranium size of great tits was developed, and in the second part cranium size was compared with measures of fitness, namely winter survival and ...

Arctic ecosystems are strongly seasonal by nature, and photosynthetic organisms in particular so. In this study, the seasonality of one of the most commonly found marine photosynthetic picoeukaryotes, Micromonas pusilla, ...

The use of species habitat suitability (HS) modelling is increasing as an approach in detecting important areas in integrated coastal zone management. European lobster (Homarus gammarus) is currently listed as near threatened ...

Interactions between closely related species, including resource competition and hybridization, might influence phenotypic evolution and play a significant role in evolutionary diversification. There may be different ...

Organochlorines can possibly cause toxic effects in birds. In this thesis, levels and relationships between health parameters, organochlorine contaminants (OCs) and body condition index (BCI) in black-legged kittiwakes and ...

Ticks are vectors for a number of infectious diseases, and an understanding of their ecology is valuable for minimising the risk of human and livestock infections. The aim of this study was to identify the previous hosts ...

Skin biopsies of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) were sampled during the spring aggregation in Disko Bay, West Greenland, over a period of 13 years, and analyzed regarding gender and genetic diversity at the mitochondrial ...

It is now commonly recognized that animals have different personalities and that these personalities are moderately heritable, repeatable, and may influence fitness components such as survival and reproduction. Much of ...

The lack of empirical knowledge on how marine reserves should be effectively designed has impeded their extensive implementation as fisheries management tools. While current knowledge is largely based on computer models, ...

Large herbivores and their grazing impact is an important subject in ecology. It is well known that grazing shapes the structure, diversity and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, but how the level of density dependence ...

Nearly one third of the vascular plant species of the remote high arctic archipelago of Svalbard are listed on the regional Red List for Svalbard, and there is a need for information to evaluate their conservation status, ...

Background: In the search for a renewable energy, micro algae have been proposed as a promising source of lipids that can be used to produce biodiesel. Method: Three species of marine microalgae, Isochrysis, Pavlova and ...

Organismer som lever i Oslofjordeneksponeres for kjemikalier som kan ha negative effekter. I denne undersøkelsen ble biomarkører for effekter fra eksponering for miljøgifter og kondisjonsindekser nøkkelarten torsk (Gadus ...

Levende organismer er kontinuerlig utsatt for påvirkninger som kan skade DNA. Dette inkluderer oksidative DNA-skader som oppstår via normal metabolisme i cellene og fra en rekke miljøkjemikalier. Reparasjon av oksidative ...

Nematodes from 361 fish from 15 species were collected between August 2010 and March 2012 at Langøya and at Torbjørnskjær in the outer Oslofjord. The study focused on the infection levels of the three most abundant nematode ...

Bale-apen (Chlorocebus djamdjamensis) er en lite kjent, endemisk primat fra det etiopiske høylandet. Apen er klassifisert som "Vulnerable" under IUCNs Rødliste for truede arter, og er truet av et stadig økende antropogent ...

Aquatic organisms are exposed to more or less continuous inputs of a wide range of potentially hazardous substances. The sources of the substances could be natural and/ or anthropogenic. This exposure may have deleterious ...

Gelatinøs dyreplankton regnes som nøkkelarter i pelagiske økosystem. Populasjonene varierer med sesong, tilgang på byttedyr og hydrografiske forhold og de former ofte store oppblomstringer som antas å ha negative, ...

The present study is the first attempt to explore the rate, characteristics and legal reactions to neonaticide in Norway during the years 1990 – 2009. Potential incidents of neonaticide were identified through the national ...

Background Pockmarks (depressions in the seabed) have been discovered throughout the world’s oceans and are often related to hydrocarbon seepage. Although high concentrations of pockmarks are present in ...

The forage-maturation hypothesis (FMH) states that herbivores migrate along a phenological gradient of plant development in order to maximize energy intake. Despite strong support for the FMH, the actual relationship between ...

Background The deer ked (Lipoptena cervi), a hematophagous ectoparasite of Cervids, is currently spreading in Scandinavia. In Norway, keds are now invading the south-eastern part of the country and the ...

Background Calpains are Ca2+-dependent cysteine proteases that participate in a range of crucial cellular processes. Dysfunction of these enzymes may cause, for instance, life-threatening diseases in humans, ...

Abstract An in vitro premalignant transformation model was established to investigate molecular changes during early lung carcinogenesis. hTERT/Cdk4-immortalized human bronchial epithelial cells (HBECs), harboring few ...

5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is formed in the Maillard reaction when reduced sugars are heated in the presence of amino acids or proteins. It can also be formed during direct thermal dehydration of fructose and sucrose, ...

Breeding systems for species with cryptic lives are difficult to examine in nature based on purely observational studies. In this study, a genetic approach was used to investigate the breeding system of a population of a ...

The dinoflagellates are a diverse lineage of microbial eukaryotes. Dinoflagellate monophyly and their position within the group Alveolata are well established. However, phylogenetic relationships between dinoflagellate ...

Phytoplankton is main producers of marine pelagic food webs, acting as link between the energy source, the sun, and consumers. Phytoplankton is an evolutionary diverse group whick is, however, traditionally assembled due ...

Understanding why some hybrid zones are bimodal and others unimodal can aid in identifying barriers to gene exchange following secondary contact. The hybrid zone between the grasshoppers Chorthippus brunneus and C. jacobsi ...

Harvesting wild populations may contrast or reinforce natural agents of selection and potentially cause evolutionary changes in life-history traits such as growth and maturation. Harvest selection may also act on behavioral ...

Background: Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is among the most important vector borne diseases of humans in Europe and is currently identified as a major health problem in many countries. TBE endemic zones have expanded over ...

Nuisance growth of the aquatic macrophyte Juncus bulbosus has been observed since the 1980s in an increasing number of rivers and lakes in northern Europe. What causes such massive growth is not well understood, however, ...

Interactions between plant roots and fungi are well known from most terrestrial ecosystems. Mycorrhizal association is the most prominent plant-fungi interaction, where the fungal partners increase the water and nutrient ...

Atlantic salmon populations are reported to be declining throughout its range, raising major management concerns. Variation in adult fish abundance may be due to variation in survival, growth, and timing of life history ...

When plastids are transferred between eukaryote lineages through series of endosymbiosis, their environment changes dramatically. Comparison of dinoflagellate plastids that originated from different algal groups has revealed ...

White whales are found all around Svalbard, but their population structure in this area is unknown. A recent study using telemetry showed that the animals tagged in the Van Keulen/Van Mijenfjorden and Storfjorden in the ...

Background Interstitial Cystitis (IC) is a chronic inflammatory condition of the bladder with unknown etiology. The aim of this study was to characterize the microbial community present in the urine from ...

In: Pagou, P. and Hallegraeff, G. (eds). Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Harmful Algae. International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO ...

In: Pagou, P. and Hallegraeff, G. (eds). Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Harmful Algae. International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO 2012 ...

Climate change is emerging as the most far reaching and significant stressor on Arctic biodiversity and it is predicted that it will lead to large changes in distributions, geographical ranges and abundances of species. ...

The aim of this study was to investigate the species composition of stomach nematodes in harbour seals, and determine if heart- and lung worms are present in the populations in the two areas Sandøy and Hvaler. The results ...

The elements carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are the most important constituents of essential biomolecules. P is a crucial element in ribosomal ribonucleic acid (RNA) is indirectly responsible for protein ...

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects from marinas on infaunal communities in Zostera marina meadows and in adjacent unvegetated sediments. The results from the study showed that Z. marina meadows supported ...

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) meadows are a common feature in shallow waters along the Norwegian coast, where they provide a habitat for an infaunal community with a high biodiversity. A field experiment, comprised of two ...

Recent multilocus studies of congeneric birds have shown a pattern of elevated interspecific divergence on the Z chromosome compared to the autosomes. In contrast, intraspecifically, birds exhibit less polymorphism on the ...

Studier av begroingsalger er et viktig verktøy for miljøovervåkning av vassdrag. Begroingsalgene kan gi rask og nyttig informasjon om endringer i akvatiske habitater. Studieobjektene i dette arbeidet er utløpselvene fra ...

Bryophytes are a dominant vegetation component of the boreal forest, and an important part of the ecosystem, yet little is known about the microbial community associated with them. The aims of this thesis were 1) to analyze ...

Background: Climate change threatens maize productivity in sub-Saharan Africa. To ensure food security, access to locally adapted genetic resources and varieties is an important adaptation measure. Most of the maize grown ...

Pleistocene climate changes have imposed extreme conditions to intertidal rocky marine communities, forcing many species to significant range shifts in their geographical distributions. Phylogeographic analyses based on ...

Background: Outbreaks of pancreas disease (PD) greatly contribute to economic losses due to high mortality, control measures, interrupted production cycles, reduced feed conversion and flesh quality in the aquaculture ...

There is growing evidence that post-copulatory sexual selection, mediated by sperm competition, influences the evolution of sperm phenotypes. Evidence for pre-copulatory sexual selection effects on sperm traits, on the ...

The seasonal timing of avian reproduction is supposed primarily to coincide with favourable feeding conditions. Long-term changes in avian breeding phenology are thus mostly scrutinized in relation to climatic factors and ...

Introduction: The absorption of photons in the water column of a lake can generally be attributed to four main components: algae, dissolved organic matter (DOM), non-living particulate organic matter (detritus), and the ...

Studies of size trends have increased in recent times. This work continues a growing number of studies of the Ordovician and the Ordovician-Silurian transition. The Ordovician is a period of Earth`s history with severe ...

Abstract Mytilus edulis is one of the most abundant and widely distributed benthic invertebrate species found in the North Atlantic. The aim of this study was to test the applicability of hemocytes from Mytilus edulis for ...

Abstract The sea-surface microlayer is the boundary layer between the water of the oceans and the atmosphere occupying approximately “1000 micrometer” uppermost part of the sea-surface microlayer (SML) (Liss and Duce, ...

The independent evolution of different quantitative traits is often thought to require a modular structure of the genotype-phenotype map (GP map). In that context, pleiotropy is considered a constraint on adaptive evolution. ...

Svepe agellater (Haptophyta) er en utbredt planteplanktongruppe som nnes i alle verdens hav. De este representantene for denne algegruppen er små (vanligvis 2 20 m), encellede, fotosyntetiserende agellater. Det har ...

Over the past decades the population of red deer, Cervus elaphus, along the south-west coast of Norway have increased 10 fold in density as evidenced from the harvest statistics. At the same time the abundance of Ixodes ...

A population of pied flycatchers was studied to examine learning of song syllables within a single breeding season. Males were separated into neighbor groups based on geographical location and access to experienced, potential ...

A central issue in life history theory is the trade-off between current reproduction and future survival. As mammalian herbivores with long life prioritize survival above reproduction, especially under harsh conditions, ...

Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is a large, cold-adapted teleost that sustains long-standing commercial fisheries and incipient aquaculture. Here we present the genome sequence of Atlantic cod, showing evidence for complex ...

Homoploid hybrid speciation in animals is poorly understood compared to the classic bifurcating mode of species diversification, mainly because of the scarcity of well-documented cases. Here, I presents the results of a ...

Det har vært en økende interesse innenfor atferdsøkologien for å studere personlighet hos dyr. Tidligere studier som har undersøkt matsøk og aposematisme hos kyllinger(Gallus gallus domesticus) har vist store individuelle ...

Background One important physiological response to environmental stress in animals is change in gene expression. To obtain reliable data from gene expression studies using RT-qPCR it is important to evaluate ...

Background Urine within the urinary tract is commonly regarded as "sterile" in cultivation terms. Here, we present a comprehensive in-depth study of bacterial 16S rDNA sequences associated with urine from ...

Background Cell lines from Atlantic salmon kidney have made it possible to culture and study infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAV), an aquatic orthomyxovirus affecting farmed Atlantic salmon. However, ...

Background The fungal genus Serpula (Serpulaceae, Boletales) comprises several saprotrophic (brown rot) taxa, including the aggressive house-infecting dry rot fungus Serpula lacrymans. Recent phylogenetic ...

Background:The implementation of high throughput sequencing for exploring biodiversity poses high demands on bioinformatics applications for automated data processing. Here we introduce CLOTU, an online and open access ...

Background Methane oxidizing prokaryotes in marine sediments are believed to function as a methane filter reducing the oceanic contribution to the global methane emission. In the anoxic parts of the sediments, ...

Background Bovine babesiosis is regarded as a limited health problem for Norwegian cows, and the incidence has decreased markedly since the 1930s. Rare cases of babesiosis in splenectomised humans from ...

Background The two homologous iron-binding lobes of transferrins are thought to have evolved by gene duplication of an ancestral monolobal form, but any conserved synteny between bilobal and monolobal ...

Background Effects of polyploidisation on gene flow between natural populations are little known. Central European diploid and tetraploid populations of Arabidopsis arenosa and A. lyrata are here used to ...

Background Following colonization of new habitats and subsequent selection, adaptation to environmental conditions might be expected to be rapid. In a mountain lake in Norway, Lesjaskogsvatnet, more than ...

Humans in industrialized societies are continuously exposed to a plethora of environmental chemicals, of which the long-term consequences are largely unknown. Reduced fertility could be one such undesired consequence, and ...

Svevestøv eller partikulært materiale (PM) er assosiert med helseskader og utvikling og forverring av lungesykdommer som kronisk obstruktiv lungesykdom (KOLS), astma og lungekreft. I dette studiet har vi undersøkt eksponering ...

Dette studiet er gjort for å undersøke cytotoksiske og inflammatoriske effekter av mykotoksinet, enniatin B (EnnB) på makrofager av museopphav (RAW 264.7 celler). EnnB produseres av forskjellige stammer av muggsoppen ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate immunomodulating effects of environmental toxicants on cytokine and ROS production in white blood cells. Immunomodulating effects can either be investigated on a healthy immune ...

Målet med oppgaven var å gi en toksikologisk karakteristikk av de oljer som transportertes langs kysten av EU. Som en del av prosjektet ble juvenil oppdrettstorsk (Gadus morhua) eksponert in vivo for vannløselig fraksjon ...

Norwegian alpine areas have for the past nine decades been subjected to an intensified use in terms of grazing by large domestic herbivores. It is thus essential to know how this affects alpine ecosystems. Grazing studies ...

Abstract Living organisms are usually exposed to combinations of a number of physical and chemical environmental factors in their natural habitats. Pre-exposure to sub lethal doses of a chemical may induce enhanced tolerance ...

We show that nitrated-polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (nitro-PAHs) induce cell death in Hepa1c1c7 cells, as measured by fluorescence microscopy. BEAS-2B cells, however did not show any relevant effects. 1.3-DNP induce ...

Torsk er en viktig organisme i Norge økonomisk, økologisk og som en matkilde. Atlanterhavstorsk i indre Oslofjord er eksponert for en rekke miljøgifter. Det er derfor viktig å overvåke helsen til torsken. I denne oppgaven ...

Utslipp av nye fremmedstoffer til det akvatiske miljø, som ulike legemidler og personlige pleieprodukter, er økende og er funnet i blant annet avløpsvann fra renseanlegg, kystvann, slam og biota. In vitro toksisitetstester ...

Hovedmålet med denne oppgaven var å analysere ekspresjonen av utvalgte gener i hyse (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) fra forskjellig områder i Nordsjøen og Island. Det har vist seg å bli tilført store mengder av stoffer som kan ...

Drug overdose is a major cause of premature death among heroin users and there has been a call for studies to identify risk factors for fatal overdoses to improve preventive interventions. The majority of heroin related ...

Birdsong is a species-specific signal that is used in mate attraction and intrasexual competition. This thesis concerns song acquisition in two oscine songbird species, the great tit Parus major and the pied flycatcher ...

Since the late 1960’s the green sea urchin Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis (O.F. Müller)has grazed down large areas of kelp forest from the county of Trøndelag to the Russian border. This comprises a coastal area of more ...

The thesis introduces a new integrated approach to ecological and evolutionary modeling, the goal of which is to create an analytical platform for applied interdisciplinary researches. This Conspecific Community Dynamics ...