We present a new phylogeny of the spider family Araneidae based on five genes (28S, 18S, COI, H3 and 16S) for 158 taxa, identified and mainly sequenced by us. This includes 25 outgroups and 133 araneid ingroups representing ...

Morphological stasis or the absence of morphological change is a well-known phenomenon in the paleontological record, yet it is poorly integrated with neontological evidence. Recent evidence suggests that cryptic species ...

All organisms need to fight pathogens to avoid infectious diseases. In vertebrates, two classes of polymorphic genes from the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are crucial for triggering immune responses against ...

Eudialyte-group minerals (EGM) attract global interest as potential resources for high-field-strength elements (e.g. Zr, Nb, Ta, and rare-earth elements), i.e. critical materials for modern technologies. They are particularly ...

The recognition of cryptic species concealed in traditionally established species may reveal new biogeographical patterns and alter the understanding of how biodiversity is geographically distributed. This is particularly ...

Biodiversity on Earth has seen many increases and decreases throughout its history. Unrevealing these changes is crucial for understanding mechanisms and dissecting principles behind diversification and extinction events. One ...

Abstract The great gerbil (Rhombomys opimus) is a social rodent living in permanent, complex burrow systems distributed throughout Central Asia, where it serves as the main host of several important vector-borne ...

As the Arctic warms, vegetation is responding, and satellite measures indicate widespread greening at high latitudes. This ‘greening of the Arctic’ is among the world’s most important large-scale ecological responses to ...

This thesis focuses on the fungus gnat genus Allodia in the dipteran family Mycetophilidae. Allodia has historically gone through several systematic changes, with additions and exclusions of taxa, and the diversity and ...

Ethnopharmalogical relevance In Africa, traditional medicine is important for local healthcare and plants used for these purposes are commonly traded. Identifying medicinal plants sold on markets is challenging, as leaves, ...

Aim: Distribution modelling is a useful approach to obtain knowledge about the spatial distribution of biodiversity, required for, for example, red-list assessments. While distribution modelling methods have been applied ...

Biologists typically distinguish species by how they look. However, with the development of DNA-based techniques to identify species, they found that genetically-different species may look remarkably similar. Biologists ...

Grey wolves (Canis lupus ) are one of the few large terrestrial carnivores that have maintained a wide geographical distribution across the Northern Hemisphere throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Recent genetic studies ...

1. Restoration of degraded ecosystems may take decades or even centuries. Accordingly, information about the current direction and speed of recovery provided by methods for predicting time to recovery may give important ...

1. Evidence‐based management of natural populations under strong human influence frequently requires not only estimates of survival but also knowledge about how much mortality is due to anthropogenic vs. natural causes. ...

Two large areas of anomalously low seismic velocities are visible in all tomographic models of the lowermost mantle. Depending on the density structure of these Large Low Shear Velocity Provinces (LLSVPs), the core-mantle ...

The boron isotopic composition of tourmaline and hambergite (Be2BO3[OH,F]) from peraluminous (n = 12), peralkaline (n = 1), and peralkaline nepheline syenite (n = 16) pegmatites has been measured by secondary ion mass ...

Distantly related lineages of the enigmatic giant rosette plants of tropical alpine environments provide classical examples of convergent adaptation. For the giant senecios (Dendrosenecio), the endemic landmarks of the ...

The general structural formula for the walentaite group is [((A), A], based on heteropolyhedral layers of configuration [M], with surface-coordinated species at the B, As2 and As3 sites, and with interlayer hydrated cation ...

The use of stormwater ponds along the highways is shown to be an effective alternative to conventional systems, which are usually sewers. These ponds have the potential to combine their primary function of pollution and ...

In terrestrial mammals, the respiratory turbinate bones within the nasal cavity are employed to conserve heat and water. In order to investigate whether environmental temperature affects respiratory turbinate structure in ...

1. Due to globalisation, trade and transport, the spread of alien species is increasing dramatically. Some alien species become ecologically harmful by threatening native biota. This can lead to irreversible changes in ...

Background Understanding the phylogenetic relationships among species is one of the main goals of systematic biology. Simultaneously, credible phylogenetic hypotheses are often the first requirement for ...

The taxonomy of Protomerulius and Heterochaetella is revised based on DNA data and morphological evidence, and their type species, P. brasiliensis and H. dubia, are proved to be congeneric. As a consequence, H. dubia and ...

Sets of presence records used to model species’ distributions typically consist of observations collected opportunistically rather than systematically. As a result, sampling probability is geographically uneven, which may ...

Metodene for feltbasert kartlegging av naturtyper i Norge er i utvikling. Kartlegging baserer seg nå i hovedsak på bruk av digitale plattformer med tilrettelagt programvare. Siden lanseringen av Natur i Norge (NiN 2.0) i ...

Gastrotrichs—’hairy bellies’—are microscopic free-living animals inhabiting marine and freshwater habitats. Based on morphological and early molecular analyses, gastrotrichs were placed close to nematodes, but recent ...

Cope's Rule describes increasing body size in evolutionary lineages through geological time. This pattern has been documented in unitary organisms but does it also apply to module size in colonial organisms? We address ...

This thesis focuses on the molecular systematics of the lichen family Ramalinaceae and is based on both freshly collected and archived specimens. Tropical members of the family remain particularly understudied, including ...

Earth’s surface and mantle sulphur reservoirs are connected via subduction, crustal recycling and volcanism. Although oceanic hotspot lavas currently provide the best constraints on the deep sulphur cycle, their restricted ...

BioDATA is an international project on developing skills in biodiversity data management and data publishing. Between 2018 and 2021, undergraduate and postgraduate students from Armenia, Belarus, Tajikistan, and Ukraine, ...

The Generic Ecological Impact Assessment of Alien Species (GEIAA) is described. It comprises a set of criteria and an assessment procedure. The set of criteria consists of three criteria that quantify invasion potential, ...

Phyllopsora is a crustose to squamulose lichen genus inhabiting the bark of trees in moist tropical forests and rainforests. Species identification is generally challenging and is mainly based on ascospore morphology, ...

The new minerals cuatrocapaite-(NH4) (IMA2018-083) and cuatrocapaite-(K) (IMA2018-084) are the NH4- and K-dominant members of a series with the general formula (NH4,K)3(NaMg□)(As2O3)6Cl6·16H2O. Both minerals were found at ...

Domestic dogs have been central to life in the North American Arctic for millennia. The ancestors of the Inuit were the first to introduce the widespread usage of dog sledge transportation technology to the Americas, but ...

The two species Parmelia ernstiae and P. serrana are reported as new to Norway from two collections each, identified by the DNA barcode marker (nrITS). A chemical analysis of selected specimens of P. saxatilis s. lat. ...

Background DNA barcodes are increasingly being used for species identification amongst the lichenised fungi. This paper presents a dataset aiming to provide an authoritative DNA barcode sequence library for a wide array ...

The early Palaeozoic Era records the initial biodiversification of the Phanerozoic. The increase in biodiversity involved drastic changes in taxon longevity, and in rates of origination and extinction. Here, we calculate ...

Aim: Although the effects of climate on species richness are known, regional pro‐ cesses may lead to different species richness–climate relationships across continents resulting in species richness anomalies, especially ...

Members of the class Mamiellophyceae comprise species that can dominate picophytoplankton diversity in polar waters. Yet, polar species are often morphologically indistinguishable from temperate species, although clearly ...

Constructed stormwater ponds mitigate runoff volumes and pollution, and provide other ecosystem services, such as supporting biodiversity, but these services attracted relatively less attention. The impacts of the pollution ...

Peculiar rocks consisting of large and rare minerals are known as nepheline syenite pegmatites and can be found in larvikite (national rock of Norway!) around the Larvik area. Detailed chemical analyses of a mineral called ...

A hitherto unrecognized Paleogene outcrop has been discovered at Sylfjellet, a mountain located at the northern side of Isfjorden, Svalbard. The strata, which cover an area of 0.8 km2, have until now been assigned to the ...

The Paraná deposit, located at Southwestern Rio Grande do Norte state, in Brazil, is one of the few emerald deposits found at Borborema Province. The mineralization occurs in phlogopite schists and actinolite-phlogopite ...

Standardized tools are needed to identify and prioritize the most harmful non-native species (NNS). A plethora of assessment protocols have been developed to evaluate the current and potential impacts of non-native species, ...

In recent years, the field of sexual selection has exploded, with advances in theoretical and empirical research complementing each other in exciting ways. This perspective piece is the product of a “stock-taking” workshop ...

Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are essential in vertebrate adaptive immunity, and they are highly diverse and duplicated in many lineages. While it is widely established that pathogen‐mediated selection ...

Traditional crop varieties are an important source of genetic diversity for crop adaptation and modern breeding. Landraces of Asian (Oryza sativa) and African (Oryza glaberrima) rice have been well studied on the continents ...

The Norwegian river Suldalslågen, known for its population of large‐sized Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar ), has been regulated for hydropower in 1966–1967 and in 1980. The initial regulation increased winter flows and reduced ...

The island-like distribution of subalpine habitats across mountain ranges can trigger the parallel evolution of locally adapted ecotypes. Such naturally replicated scenarios allow testing hypotheses on how elevational ...

The Ordovician was a time of drastic biological and geological change. Previous work has suggested that there was a dramatic increase in global diversity during this time, but also has indicated that regional dynamics and ...

Background: The genus Aloe has long been known for its use in healthcare and cosmetics. In Tanzania, overexploitation is threatening some Aloe species with extinction and yet, little has been documented on the abundance ...

The endangered Spitsbergen stock of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) has once been large with up to estimated 100,000 individuals. Genetic diversity of the extant Spitsbergen stock is unknown. We present 10 complete ...

Crop wild relatives (CWR) can provide one solution to future challenges on food security, sustainable agriculture and adaptation to climate change. Diversity found in CWR can be essential for adapting crops to these new ...

We present the results of an inventory and status assessment of alien species in Norway. The inventory covered all known multicellular neobiota, 2496 in total, 1039 of which were classified as naturalised. The latter ...

Thermal melanism theory states that dark-colored ectotherm organisms are at an advantage at low temperature due to increased warming. This theory is generally supported for ectotherm animals, however, the function of colors ...

High concentrations of mercury, possibly connected with widespread volcanism of the Siberian Traps, have previously been associated with the Smithian/Spathian (Early Triassic) boundary (SSB) in the Sverdrup Basin, Tethyan ...

Phylogenetic relationships within the important ichthyosaur family Ophthalmosauridae are not well established, and more specimens and characters, especially from the postcranial skeleton, are needed. Three ophthalmosaurid ...

The widely used “Maxent” software for modeling species distributions from presence‐only data (Phillips et al., Ecological Modelling, 190, 2006, 231) tends to produce models with high‐predictive performance but low‐ecological ...

Background Female promiscuity is highly variable among birds, and particularly among songbirds. Comparative work has identified several patterns of covariation with social, sexual, ecological and life history ...

Cryptic species are detected at an ever‐increasing rate, mainly due to the application of molecular data. While the impact of this hidden diversity on macro‐ecology and conversation biology is widely recognized, its ...

Postcopulatory sexual selection may promote evolutionary diversification in sperm form, but the contribution of between‐species divergence in sperm morphology to the origin of reproductive isolation and speciation remains ...

The great auk was once abundant and distributed across the North Atlantic. It is now extinct, having been heavily exploited for its eggs, meat, and feathers. We investigated the impact of human hunting on its demise by ...

Sperm swimming performance, including swimming speed and the proportion of motile cells, may strongly affect fertilization success. However, little is known about how methodological factors affect in vitro measurement of ...

Bryozoans are a moderately diverse, mostly marine phylum with a fossil record extending to the Early Ordovician. Compared to other phyla, little is known about their phylogenetic relationships at both lower and higher ...

In a rapidly changing world, it is important to understand how urban environments impact wildlife. For example, supplementary feeding of birds, though well‐intended, might have unexpected negative effects on the health of ...

Sperm morphology varies enormously across the animal kingdom. Whilst knowledge of the factors that drive the evolution of interspecific variation in sperm morphology is accumulating, we currently have little understanding ...

BioDATA (Biodiversity Data for Internationalisation in Higher Education) is an international project to develop and deliver biodiversity data training for undergraduate and postgraduate students from Armenia, Belarus, ...

Although only a relatively small proportion of plant species form ectomycorrhizae with fungi, it is crucial for growth and survival for a number of widespread woody plant species. Few studies have attempted to investigate ...

During the Late Ordovician, large explosive volcanic eruptions deposited worldwide K-bentonites, including the Millbrig and Deicke K-bentonites in North America and the Kinnekulle K-bentonite in Scandinavia. We have studied ...

The Larvik Plutonic Complex (LPC) contains pegmatites with a wide array of mineral assemblages and morphological features. The pegmatites have traditionally been described as nepheline syenite and syenite pegmatites which ...

Documented occurrences of fossil taxa are the empirical foundation for understanding large-scale biodiversity changes and evolutionary dynamics in deep time. The fossil record contains vast amounts of understudied taxa. ...

1. Distinguishing correlative and causal connections among time series is an important challenge in evolutionary biology, ecology, macroevolution and palaeobiology. 2. Here, we present layeranalyzer, an r package that ...

Seminal fluid proteins (SFPs) mediate an array of postmating reproductive processes that influence fertilization and fertility. As such, it is widely held that SFPs may contribute to postmating, prezygotic reproductive ...

Schizolite, originating from the type locality, Tutop Agtakôrfia, in the Ilímaussaq alkaline complex, Julianehåb district, South Greenland, was described initially by Winther (1901) with additional data being supplied by ...

In the Mesozoic seas, the apex predators were reptiles. From the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, the Spitsbergen Mesozoic Research Group has excavated numerous well preserved marine reptile skeletons in order to understand ...

We distinguish five Xanthomendoza species in Norway, viz., X. borealis, X. fallax, X. fulva, X. oregana, and X. ulophyllodes, based on morphology and molecular evidence. This paper gives an updated taxonomy of the Norwegian ...

Biological specimens in natural history collections worldwide are increasingly being used in biogeographical, environmental, and taxonomic studies. For their meaningful use, correct species identification is crucial. For ...

Cryptic species could represent a substantial fraction of biodiversity. However, inconsistent definitions and taxonomic treatment of cryptic species prevent informed estimates of their contribution to biodiversity and ...

Background Microhabitat changes are thought to be among the main drivers of diversification. However, this conclusion is mostly based on studies on vertebrates. Here, we investigate the influence of ...

Ethnopharmacological relevance: More than 15,000 angiosperm species are dioecious, i.e., having distinct male and female individual plants. The allocation of resources between male and female plants is different, and also ...

Introduction Herbal medicines play an important role globally in the health care sector and in industrialised countries they are often considered as an alternative to mono-substance medicines. Current quality and ...

Male fertilization success depends on investment in both pre- and postcopulatory sexually selected traits, and considerable attention has recently been paid to quantifying the strength and direction of covariance between ...

Both molecular and morphologic characters support the reinstatement of Leuctra biellensis Festa, 1942 as a valid species distinct from Leuctra nigra (Olivier, 1811). Genetic distances between L. biellensis and the different ...

Purpose Treelines and forest lines (TFLs) have received growing interest in recent decades, due to their potential role as indicators of climate change. However, the understanding of TFL dynamics is challenged by the complex ...

The Agardhfjellet Formation (Middle Jurassic to lowermost Cretaceous) of Svalbard (Norwegian Arctic) is well known for its abundant and unique marine reptile fauna, of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. In an attempt to reconstruct ...

1. Species composition is a vital attribute of any ecosystem. Accordingly, ecological restoration often has the original, or “natural,” species composition as its target. However, we still lack adequate methods for predicting ...

This paper provides a theoretical understanding of sampling bias in presence-only data in the context of species distribution modelling. This understanding forms the basis for two integrated frameworks, one for detecting ...

Background The economic value of ginseng in the global medicinal plant trade is estimated to be in excess of US$2.1 billion. At the same time, the evolutionary placement of ginseng (Panax ginseng) and the ...

Questions: Substantial variation between observers has been found when comparing parallel land-cover maps, but how can we know which map is better? What magnitude of error and inter-observer variation is expected when ...

Zoonotic infections transmitted from terrestrial and marine mammals to humans in European Arctic are of unknown significance, despite considerable potential for transmission due to local hunt and a rapidly changing ...

Theoretical models predict that investment in pre-copulatory and post-copulatory sexually selected traits should trade-off. At the macroevolutionary scale, the majority of studies to date have focused on male weaponry as ...

Low morphological diversity among interstitial taxa makes it difficult to delimit species and their geographic boundaries based solely on morphology and molecular data often reveal cryptic species. Polygordius (Annelida, ...

Many interstitial species were first described as widely distributed, often cosmopolitan or amphi-oceanic, contrasting with descriptions of a sedentary life style and the general absence of pelagic dispersal stages. These ...

Speciation research has largely overlooked reproductive barriers acting between copulation and the formation of the zygote (i.e., postmating, prezygotic [PMPZ] barriers), especially in internally fertilizing vertebrates. ...

Climate change is expected to result in range shifts and habitat fragmentation for many species. In the Arctic, loss of sea ice will reduce barriers to dispersal or eliminate movement corridors, resulting in increased ...

Almost all mammals communicate using sound, but few species produce complex songs. Two baleen whales sing complex songs that change annually, though only the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) has received much research ...

Loss of Arctic sea ice has implications for the distribution and population structure of ice-dependent species such as polar bears Ursus maritimus. We used remotely sensed sea-ice concentration data for Baffin Bay, Canada, ...

The long history of human land use have had a strong influence on ecosystems and landscapes in the boreal forest region of Northern Europe and created semi-natural habitats of high conservation value. In this study, we ...