Human activities have historically influenced the evolution of other species. Dramatic modifications in land-use and extreme urbanization have increased not only the amount of species associated with human environments, ...

Dracocephalum ruyschiana is a rare species in Europe and its conservation is considered a priority by the Norwegian Environment Agency. Specialist species in fragmented and rare habitats such as dry, calcareous grasslands ...

Free-ranging reindeer (Rangifer tarandus L.) eat a diverse diet of graminoids, herbs, shrubs, woody plants, mushroom, lichen and mosses. DNA metabarcoding is an established method in dietary studies and through e.g. ...

The genus Cochlearia, together with its sister genus Ionopsidium Rchb., forms the tribe Cochlearieae, a rather small tribe which comprises about 30 taxa, which either x=6 or x=7 basic chromosome number. The x=6 series forms ...

Black-headed Gulls are in rapid decline in Norway and is categorized as VU (Vulnerable) on the national Red List. The Norwegian population has decreased from 30 000 pairs around 1990 to just 7000 pairs in 2011. In the study ...

Seabirds bring substantial amounts of nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) from sea to their breeding colonies. On Svalbard, previous research has focused on the ornithogenic fluxes from sea to land, but little is known of the ...

I present a model of chiasma interference and recombination in homo- and heterokaryotypes and a model of nonrandom mating. These two models form the basis of a general-purpose deterministic multilocus evolution simulator, ...

Land cover maps provide spatial information on the physical cover of the earth. With increasing strain on natural resources, these maps enable knowledge-based nature management. Such maps represent a generalization of ...

During the last century, the grey wolf (Canis lupus L.) was subject to extensive hunting pressure, which led to functional extinction of this species from the Scandinavian Peninsula around 1970. Wolves reappeared in ...

In northern Europe, the tick Ixodes ricinus is of particular concern, as it is the principal vector of the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (s.l.) which is known to cause Lyme disease in humans, among other ...

Abstract Rotifers and phytoplankton have been vastly used by scientists as model organisms in toxicological, eco-toxicological, ecological and other studies. In order to conduct experiments on interactions between animals ...

I have addressed taxonomic affiliation, genus delimitation, and species delimitations in the lichen genus Eschatogonia. Preliminary parsimony analyses, based on one mitochondrial (SSU) ribosomal DNA-region, on a dataset ...

In sexually reproducing taxa, normal sperm function is critical for successful reproduction, and pathogenic bacteria can prevent this. Thus, understanding the role of bacteria in ejaculates can have significant implications ...

Insect pollination is an important contribution to wild ecosystems in Norway and 80 % of plants seem to benefit from this important ecosystem service. During the last century, there has been an overall decline in pollinators, ...

The evolutionary scaling of brain size on body size among species is strikingly constant across vertebrates, suggesting that the brain size is constrained by body size. Body size is a strong predictor of brain size, but ...

In the past century, the agricultural landscape in Norway, and Europe, has changed drastically. Artificial fertilizer, electricity and modern machinery has contributed to the development of the industrialization of the ...

Fragmentation of habitats is one of the major threats to biodiversity. Fragmentations will reduce connectivity and consequently affect the genetic population structure particularly in rivers. In the current study the genetic ...

Bird song is used for both intra-sexual and inter-sexual interactions, in male-male competition and for attracting females. In species that use song for attraction, the females often prefer males with larger repertoires ...

Climate change is the effect of rapid and recent change in global climate variables, affecting all species in all ecosystems. Fungi are no exception, fulfilling a variety of important roles as decomposers, parasites and ...

The regular movement of animals between summer and winter ranges, termed seasonal migration, is a common phenomenon among ungulates at northern latitudes. The most prominent hypothesis to explain seasonal migration is the ...

Primates habitats are being increasingly fragmented by human activities worldwide. The behavioural flexibility exhibited by vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) is assumed to be crucial in the species ability to persist ...

Hybridization is increasingly recognized as a source of novel variation, but how hybridization can contribute to evolution is still not fully understood. Insights into the evolutionary potential of hybrid species, and the ...

Ticks are important vectors for a variety of pathogens of medical and veterinary importance worldwide. Small rodents and shrews are widely distributed, and can harbour several species of ticks and substantial tick burdens. ...

Nutrient availability is important for microbes in soil environments. When an animal dies and decomposes, nutrients are released into the soil. This may cause a shift in the diversity of microbes present, as well as lead ...

Section Cochlearia (Brassicaceae) includes highly polymorphic species complexes with regard to ploidal level, ecological adaptation and distribution. Low levels of chloroplast DNA divergence suggest that taxa most likely ...

Hybridization is an important evolutionary force. It may lead to the formation of new, adaptive genotypes, or even the formation of a new species. However, it also may lead to replacement, or merging of species. Hybridization ...

When facing life-threatening perturbation the following stress reaction will usually turn current behavior towards survival behaviors. However, this can have a potential fitness trade-off if it turns behavior away from ...

The Black Death pandemic swept through Europe during the Middle Ages leading to high mortality from plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. How the disease was transmitted in Europe is not fully elucidated, and ...

Juncus bulbosus Growth Experiment performed over 13 weeks to establish its response to anoxic conditions over root system. 20 of 40 plants were grown hydroponically with oxygen deprived water supplied to the root system. ...

Beak morphology is an ecologically important trait for birds. Beak size and shape are crucial for adapting to new niches and for optimal utilization of existing food sources. The adaptive potential of a species can be ...

Across the avian lineage, closely related species, or even populations within the same species may display differing migratory phenotypes. The many components of migratory behaviour are inherited as one migratory gene ...

Wrasse species went from having almost no commercial value in Norway, and not being fished, to a landing of 21.2 million individuals in 2014 with 11.68 million of these being goldsinny. This explosive growth in fishing ...

Various stressors such as higher temperatures, grazing by sea urchins, and anthropogenic effects may threaten kelp forests around the world. Conservation efforts can benefit from an understanding of current and historic ...

Repeatable behavioural variation within individuals that is consistent over time and across contexts is often defined as non-human animal personality. Individuals may be classified as having a shy or bold personality. Shy ...

A permanent landscape scale grazing experiment was established at Hol, Buskerud, in a lower alpine ecosystem with a recent history of rather low grazing pressure. Since 2002, nine sub-enclosures has been permanently subjected ...

Fisheries activities and the development of more efficient fishing gear, have had detrimental effects in commercial stocks. This occurs largely as a result of negative selection acting on certain individuals during the ...

Animal personality can be defined as individual behavioural differences that are repeatable and consistent across time and/or contexts. In the model species great tit Parus major, studies on personality have shown consistent ...

Mycorrhizal associations are essential to most plant life on earth. Cassiope tetragona is a circumpolar Arctic plant in the Ericaceae family, which has been reported to form ericoid mycorrhiza as well as ectomycorrhiza, ...

Arabidopsis thaliana has proven to be an extremely useful model organism in studies of plant biology and an extensive base of knowledge has been amassed of the diverse molecular processes in this plant. The next step is ...

Sandtjern nature reserve, located on the Gardermoen Delta, SE Norway, consists of a series of kettle holes that are subjected to severe annual wet-dry cycles due to flooding. In the rainy season in late autumn, the kettle ...

Hybridization is a common phenomenon within the genus Canis. The recently discovered African wolf (Canis lupaster), is sympatric with several closely related species; the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), the side-striped ...

As molecular and bioinformatics techniques are used more frequently and new marine habitats are analysed, a constant increase of marine fungal diversity has been reported, suggesting that marine fungi are a diverse but ...

The three-spine stickleback is an adaptable fish with variation in morphology and behaviour, inhabiting saltwater, brackish water and fresh water. It is armoured with 30-35 bone plates along its lateral line. In addition, ...

Reproductive barriers between diverging taxa are necessary for speciation to occur. Premating barriers are thought to be of especially great importance, such as plumage colour which is often used in species recognition and ...

The population dynamics of the three early colonizing vascular plant species Oxyria digyna, Poa alpina and Ranunculus glacialis was studied in a chronosequence in the glacier foreland of Hellstugubreen in Jotunheimen ...

Temperatur og fosforkonsentrasjon spiller inn på cellesyklus til C. reinhardtii. Ikke-synkron cellesyklus gjør størrelsesendringer vanskelig å detekterer. Mulig genomstørrelse endring som følge av reallokasjon av P fra DNA ...

Polyploidy and ecotypic differentiation are important aspects of plant evolution. The present study has applied molecular methods to investigate the polyploid origin and ecotypic differentiation of the tetraploid Cochlearia ...

European grayling from a common-gene pool and with a known ancestry were released into headwaters of a river system in Lesja, Oppland, Norway, about a century ago. These grayling dispersed downstream, and as a result there ...

Interspecific hybridization has intrigued evolutionary biologists since Darwin s time. New genetic combinations can arise from hybridization, leading to offspring sometimes able to adapt to different niches than their ...

Extractive foraging of underground storage organs (USOs) is believed to have played an important role in human evolution. This behavior is also present in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), who sometimes use tools in the ...

The taxonomy of the staphylinid genus Mocyta was explored using molecular markers, in addition to a thorough investigation of the published literature regarding this genus and its proposed morphospecies. The aim was to ...

The population dynamics of the three early colonizing plant species Saxifraga stellaris, Arabis alpina and Cerastium cerastoides was studied in the Hellstugubreen glacier foreland in Jotunheimen National Park in southern ...

Phenotypic plasticity allows organisms with identical genotypes to develop different phenotypes in response to different environmental cues. Phenotypic plasticity is a trait in itself, and can be either adaptive or ...

Plant reproduction in the Arctic is challenging, and tight energy budgets, short growing season and the limited number of pollinators favour self-pollination. Self-pollination over time will, however, have a negative effect ...

Heterozygosity is often shown to have a positive relationship with fitness-related characters. Sperm cells are fitness-related characters that show great variation among species, population's males and even within individual ...

A set of life history traits were studied in order to compare the thermal responses of two populations of the surface living Collembolan Hypogastrura viatica, from the highly contrasting climates of north east Svalbard and ...

Ectomycorrhiza (ECM) is an ancient and prevalent symbiosis between plants and fungi, and is crucial for growth and survival for a number of plants. Host plants can form ECM with multiple fungi, yet little is known about ...

Elettaria Maton is a small genus in the pantropical Zingiberaceae, comprising 11 species. Molecular data analyses have been widely used to reconstruct evolutionary history and to infer phylogenetic relationships, but to ...