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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The assessment of evolutionary divergences within subspecies complexes provide an effective short-cut for estimating intraspecific genetic diversity, which is relevant for conservation actions. We explore new evidence ...

Colymbosaurus is a genus of long-necked plesiosaurian represented by two valid species: C. megadeirus from the Upper Kimmeridge Clay Formation (Kimmeridgian–Tithonian) of the United Kingdom and C. svalbardensis from the ...

The Oslo area has a rich geodiversity, a long history of scientific investigations, and several protected geosites. Many of the protected geosites were protected some 30 years ago and have until recently not been followed ...

Studying herbal products derived from local and traditional knowledge and their value chains is one of the main challenges in ethnopharmacology. The majority of these products have a long history of use, but non-harmonized ...

The Eichigt granite is one of two apical intrusions forming the concealed massif of Eichigt−Schönbrunn in the Erzgebirge−Vogtland metallogenic province of Germany. It represents a peraluminuous, medium-grained, Si-rich ...

Many herbal products have a long history of use, but there are increasing concerns over product efficacy, safety and quality in the wake of recent cases exposing discrepancies between labeling and constituents. When it ...

Local markets provide a rapid insight into the medicinal plants growing in a region as well as local traditional health concerns. Identification of market plant material can be challenging as plants are often sold in dried ...

Natural history museum collections represent a vast source of ancient and historical DNA samples from extinct taxa that can be utilized by high-throughput sequencing tools to reveal novel genetic and phylogenetic information ...

The PhytoAuthent project was structured to gather, test, develop and apply, in real life case scenarios, molecular techniques, such as biochemical fingerprinting and DNA sequence-based methods, for plant identification of ...

The Eggvin Bank, located between the Jan Mayen Island and Greenland, is an unusually shallow area containing several submarine volcanic peaks, confined by two transforms on the Northern Kolbeinsey Ridge (NKR). We represent ...

The Late-Proterozoic Sveconorwegian pegmatite province in southern Norway and southwest Sweden hosts seven rare-element pegmatite districts with more than 5000 rare-element pegmatites. Most of these pegmatites with ...

The scattered eastern African high mountains harbor a renowned and highly endemic flora, but the taxonomy and phylogeographic history of many plant groups are still insufficiently known. The high-alpine populations of the ...

Background To date, mitochondrial genomes of more than one hundred flatworms (Platyhelminthes) have been sequenced. They show a high degree of similarity and a strong taxonomic bias towards parasitic lineages. ...

Pockmarks are seafloor craters usually formed during methane release on continental margins. However, the mechanisms behind their formation and dynamics remain elusive. Here we report detailed investigations on one of the ...

Tubers of terrestrial orchids are harvested and traded from the eastern Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea for the traditional product Salep. Overexploitation of wild populations and increased middle-class prosperity have ...

Herein we describe the new species, Psora taurensis, from two localities in the Taurus Mountains in Turkey at ca. 1000 m altitude. Investigations of anatomy, secondary chemistry and DNA sequences (ITS and mtSSU) of P. ...

Intensified human land use continues to increase habitat loss and fragmentation, and leads to a homogenization of biodiversity. Specialized species with narrow niches seem to be declining more rapidly than generalist ...

Most people in the Swat valley of northwest Pakistan practice subsistence farming, supplementing their income by collecting and selling wild harvested plants for use in herbal medicine. Previous work showed that the ...

Orchids are one of the largest plant families and are commercially traded for a variety of purposes, including as ornamental plants, medicinal products and food. These markets involve thousands of species, which may be ...

In eastern Mediterranean countries orchids continue to be collected from the wild for the production of salep, a beverage made of dried orchid tubers. In this study we used nrITS1 and nrITS2 DNA metabarcoding to identify ...

Background and AimsNepenthes attracts wide attention with its spectacularly shaped carnivorous pitchers, cultural value and horticultural curiosity. Despite the plant’s iconic fascination, surprisingly little anatomical ...

Ethnopharmacological relevance What are the minimum methodological and conceptual requirements for an ethnopharmacological field study? How can the results of ethnopharmacological field studies be reported so that researchers ...

The tropical alpine ecosystem in eastern Africa is highly fragmented among biological ‘sky islands’, where populations of frost-tolerant organisms are isolated from each other by a ‘sea’ of tropical lowlands. One-third of ...

Pegmatites are extremely coarse-grained and heterogeneous rocks in which quantitative measurements of mineral proportions and chemical compositions of the whole rock are virtually impossible to acquire. Thus, conventional ...

Nordland is Norway’s second largest county, with an areal extent of 38,482 km2 . In general, Nordland is reasonably well covered in terms of botanical exploration, with few blank areas. No flora covering the entire area ...

The extensive spatial and temporal coverage of many citizen science datasets (CSD) makes them appealing for use in species distribution modeling and forecasting. However, a frequent limitation is the inability to validate ...

Background Satellite telemetry studies provide information that is critical to the conservation and management of species affected by ecological change. Here we report on the performance and retention of ...

This contribution focuses on the family Encyrtidae from Oslo Municipality, one of the richer areas in Norway as biodiversity concerns. The following four species are reported for the first time from Norway: Metaphycus ...

The following five species of the family Pteromalidae are reported for the first time from Norway: Gastrancistrus autumnalis (Walker, 1834), Gastrancistrus picipes (Nees, 1834), Glyphognathus laevis (Delucchi, 1953), ...

Background Thousands of flowering plant species attract pollinators without offering rewards, but the evolution of this deceit is poorly understood. Rewardless flowers of the orchid Erycina pusilla have an ...

In spite of a fossil record spanning over 150 million years, pelvic girdle evolution in Ichthyopterygia is poorly known. Here, we examine pelvic girdle size relationships using quantitative methods and new ophthalmosaurid ...

The Tres Arroyos granite–pegmatite system is located in the SW margin of the Nisa-Alburquerque Variscan batholith. Two granitic facies (monzogranite and marginal leucogranite) and three types of aplite–pegmatite dykes ...

Quartz samples of different origin from 10 localities in the Southern Ural region, Russia have been investigated to characterize their trace element compositions and defect structures. The analytical combination of ...

Background One of the biggest challenges in avian taxonomy is the delimitation of allopatric species because their reproductive incompatibility cannot be directly studied in the wild. Instead, reproductive ...

Shrub expansion in high latitudes is a widely observed response to climate change. Extensive evidence has shown that shrub expansion can lead to positive feedbacks to the regional climate. In this study we evaluate the ...

Complete mitochondrial genomes of five syllids (Streptosyllis sp., Eusyllis blomstrandi, Myrianida brachycephala, Typosyllis antoni and Typosyllis sp.) have been obtained using Illumina sequencing. Together with two previous ...

Abstract.—Phylogenomic studies have improved understanding of deep metazoan phylogeny and show promise for resolving incongruences among analyses based on limited numbers of loci. One region of the animal tree that has ...

Sperm morphological traits are highly variable among species and are commonly thought to evolve by post-copulatory sexual selection. However, little is known about the evolutionary dynamics of sperm morphology, and whether ...

Divergent sexual selection within allopatric populations may result in divergent sexual phenotypes, which can act as reproductive barriers between populations upon secondary contact. This hypothesis has been most tested ...

Background The rather species-poor oviparous gyrodactylids are restricted to South America. It was suggested that they have a basal position within the otherwise viviparous Gyrodactylidae. Accordingly, it ...

In the present study, we describe the new species, Psora altotibetica, from nine localities in China (Tibetan area) and Nepal. The study includes analyses of anatomy, secondary chemistry, and DNA sequence data of P. ...

The cumulative effects of climate warming on herbivore vital rates and population dynamics are hard to predict, given that the expected effects differ between seasons. In the Arctic, warmer summers enhance plant growth ...

Human population expansion and associated degradation of the habitat of many wildlife species cause loss of biodiversity and species extinctions. The small Simen Mountains National Park in Ethiopia is one of the last ...

Hybridization is frequent in the large and ecologically significant genus Carex (Cyperaceae). In four important sections of the northern regions (Ceratocystis, Glareosae, Phacocystis and Vesicariae), the frequent occurrence ...

The flora on the isolated high African mountains or ‘sky islands’ is remarkable for its peculiar adaptations, local endemism and striking biogeographical connections to remote parts of the world. Ages of the plant lineages ...

A plethora of studies published over the last two decades produced numerous contradictory phylogenies leading to the lack of consensus on phylogenetic history in dung beetles. Thus, due to those contradictions, the community ...

The main aim of this paper is to address consequences of climate warming on loss of habitat and genetic diversity in the enigmatic tropical alpine giant rosette plants using the Ethiopian endemic Lobelia rhynchopetalum as ...

Changing climate is expected to alter precipitation patterns in the Arctic, with consequences for subsurface temperature and moisture conditions, community structure, and nutrient mobilization through microbial belowground ...

The typically repetitive nature of the sex-limited chromosome means that it is often excluded from or poorly covered in genome assemblies, hindering studies of evolutionary and population genomic processes in non-recombining ...

Long-distance dispersal (LDD) processes influence the founder effect on islands.We use genetic data for 25 Atlantic species and similarities among regional floras to analyse colonization, and test whether the genetic founder ...

Background Evolutionary biology endeavours to explain biological diversity, and as such it is critical to develop an understanding of the adaptive and functional significance of trait variation. Spermatozoa ...

Sympatric species are expected to minimize competition by partitioning resources, especially when these are limited. Herbivores inhabiting the High Arctic in winter are a prime example of a situation where food availability ...

Background The genus Aloe is renowned for its medicinal and cosmetic properties and long history of use. Sixty-three Aloe species occur in Kenya, of which around 50 % are endemic. Several species of aloes ...

The maximum entropy (MaxEnt) method has gained widespread use for distribution modelling, mostly because of the practical simplicity offered by the maxent.jar software. Whilst MaxEnt was originally described as a machine ...

Scarabaeine dung beetles are the dominant dung feeding group of insects and are widely used as model organisms in conservation, ecology and developmental biology. Due to the conflicts among 13 recently published phylogenies ...

Data from large sampling programmes for the mapping of marine invertebrates in the Oslofjord, Norway, and the Skagerrak, spanning more than six decades, are compiled and digitized to provide easy access in modern data ...

Fourteen species of lichenized or lichenicolous fungi are reported new to either Norway or Sweden or both countries. Several of these are rare and almost unknown. The reported species are: Acarospora insignis (new to ...

The present faunistic survey gives distributional records for 72 species of the family Ichneumonidae (Hymenoptera), which recently have been collected in Norway. 14 of these have previously not been reported from Scandinavia, ...

Systasis edlandi n. sp. is described from Norway, representing a new species of Systasis Walker, 1834. Discrimination from the closest species is discussed briefly. The material is a result of an extensive hatching project ...

The study of the family Encyrtidae at the Natural History Museum of Oslo continues. 13 species are reported for the first time from Norway in this revision, bringing the total number of Norwegian encyrtids up to 136. ...

Restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) has recently become an important method to generate genome-wide molecular data for species delimitation, phylogeography, and population genetic studies. However, very ...

Background Several life history and ecological variables have been reported to affect the likelihood of species becoming urbanized. Recently, studies have also focused on the role of brain size in explaining ...

Increased human activity and climate change are expected to increase the numbers and impact of alien species in the Arctic, but knowledge of alien species is poor in most Arctic regions. Through field investigations over ...

Background Aloe vera supports a substantial global trade yet its wild origins, and explanations for its popularity over 500 related Aloe species in one of the world’s largest succulent ...

The European Landscape Convention emphasises the human perception of landscapes in its definition of the landscape, and promotes citizen participation in landscape management processes. On the other hand, landscape definitions ...

Background Gyrodactylus salaris is a directly transmitted ectoparasite that reproduces in situ on its fish host. Wild Norwegian (East Atlantic) salmon stocks are thought to be ...

The material of the family Aphelinidae at the Natural History Museum of Oslo is revised. Twelve species not previously recorded from Norway have been found. One species Aphelinus quercus n. sp. is described and illustrated. ...

The amazon ant Polyergus rufescens (Latreille, 1798) is recorded in Norway. Two cohorts were observed at Skåtøy, Kragerø municipality (TEY, EIS 11), 9 July 1995, raiding pupae of Formica fusca Linnaeus, 1758, which is one ...

The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, and ecological niches, complemented by information on collection ...

The present PhD thesis, entitled “Gyrodactylids on European salmonids hosts: genomics, phylogeography and speciation”, presents a number of significant contributions to the field of evolutionary biology. It offers novel ...

One new order, one new family, and one new combination are presented, as the result of molecular phylogenetic analyses. The new order Stereopsidales and the new family Stereopsidaceae are described incorporating Stereopsis ...

New records and barcodes are given for three species of Psychodidae not previously recorded from Norway; Telmatoscopus advena (Eaton, 1893), Parajungiella pseudolongicornis (Wagner, 1975) and Psychoda erminea Eaton, 1898. ...

The main goal of the present report is to outline the possibilities for an enhanced cooperation between the Nordic countries within eScience and biodiversity. LifeWatch is one of several ESFRI projects which aim to establish ...

The present faunistic survey gives distributional records for 125 species of the family Braconidae (Hymenoptera) from several subfamilies (Agathidinae, Alysiinae, Aphidiinae, Brachistinae, Braconinae, Cheloninae, Doryctinae, ...

The study of the collection of the family Encyrtidae at the Natural History Museum of Oslo continues. Eighteen species are reported for the first time from Norway in this revision, bringing the total number of Norwegian ...

This dissertation is about female promiscuity in passerine birds. By using comparative analytical approaches, I have tried to determine why there is such variation in the frequency of this behaviour. I have found that ...

Crossing experiments indicate that hybrid sterility barriers frequently have developed within diploid, circumpolar plant species of the genus Draba. To gain insight into the rapid evolution of postzygotic reproductive ...

Morphological investigations confirm that there are two species of Papaver in Svalbard: P. dahlianum and P. cornwallisense. The two most distinctive diagnostic characters are the number of stamens and the length of ...

Intraspecific competition for food is expected to increase the trophic niche width of consumers, defined here as their diet diversity, but this process has been little studied in herbivores. Population densities of small ...

Pockmarks are geological features that are found on the bottom of lakes and oceans all over the globe. Some are active, seeping oil or methane, while others are inactive. Active pockmarks are well studied since they harbor ...

The collection of the family Encyrtidae at the Natural History Museum of Oslo is revised, and this study focuses on the ethanol preserved material in particular. Eighteen species are reported for the first time from Norway, ...

Females of the autumn crane fly Tipula (Platytipula) moiwana (Matsumura, 1916) were collected along the river Ljanselva in Oslo. This species was hitherto only known from the easternmost Palaearctic and from the Moscow and ...

The collection of the family Encyrtidae at the Natural History Museum of Oslo is revised, and this study focuses on the ethanol-preserved material in particular. Sixteen species are reported for the first time from Norway, ...

Eleven specimens of Camilla flavicauda Duda 1922 were accidentally reared indoors in Oslo, and a twelfth one was later found free living. In addition, four old specimens of Camilla glabra (Fallén, 1823) were found in the ...

The terrestrial environment of the High Arctic consists of a mosaic of habitat types. In addition to the natural habitat diversity, various human-influenced types may occur. For the resident invertebrate fauna, these ...

The tribe Meteorini comprises the two genera Meteorus Haliday, 1835 and Zele Curtis, 1832, and materials of these genera has been examined in the collections of the Natural History Museum in Oslo. Nine species not previously ...

Background The granivorous house sparrow Passer domesticus is thought to have developed its commensal relationship with humans with the rise of agriculture in the Middle East some 10,000 years ago, and to ...

The present distribution of the invasive slug Arion vulgaris Moquin-Tandon was studied in Norway. This important pest species has spread to many parts of Europe during the last decades, inflicting damage to agriculture and ...

Phylogeographic studies in the high mountains of Africa are hampered by the limited material available, resulting in insufficient knowledge of taxonomic variation within and among closely related species. Here, we address ...

Several eukaryotic symbioses have shown to host a rich diversity of prokaryotes that interact with their hosts. Here, we study bacterial communities associated with ectomycorrhizal root systems of Bistorta vivipara compared ...

The present survey gives distributional records for 49 species of the family Ichneumonidae (Hymenoptera) previously not recorded from Norway. Eight of these have hitherto not been reported from Scandinavia, namely Adelognathus ...

The agromyzid fly Phytomyza arnicae Hering, 1925 is reported from Norway for the first time. This species is exclusively associated with Arnica montana L., where the larvae are leaf-miners. Mining larvae were collected in ...

The ichneumonid wasp Neorhacodes enslini (Ruschka, 1922) is recorded for the first time in Norway. A single female was caught in a Malaise-trap at Abildsø, Østensjøvannet, Oslo municipality (AK; EIS 28), July 1996. This ...