Hydrocarbon pollution in marine environments present an acute problem which is aggravated by cold temperatures. This is especially relevant in important environmental and economic northern regions such as the Barents Sea. The Barents Sea region has become the focus of oil industries from Russia and Norway, incrementing the risk of hydrocarbon pollution. Bioremediation is a cost-effective and ...

Mercury (Hg) contamination in aquatic ecosystems is a serious concern because it can bioaccumulate and biomagnify to harmful concentrations within a food web and consequently end up in humans that eat polluted fish. The Pasvik watercourse, located in the border area between Norway, Finland and Russia, is strongly affected by the emissions of heavy metals from nearby Russian metallurgic smelters. In ...

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) have a cosmopolitan distribution with a broad diet ranging from fish to marine mammals. Regional populations show local prey specialization and their movements are tightly linked to those of their prey. Norwegian killer whales are known to feed extensively on Norwegian spring spawning (NSS) herring (Clupea harengus). Over the last decade, killer whales have begun to ...

Vaccinium myrtillus L., commonly known as European blueberry or bilberry, has been used as food and medicine since ancient times. Bilberries are highly valued in European and Asian markets. Sugar accumulation is responsible for the sweet taste of fruit, which is one of the main determinants of fruit quality. However, sugar metabolism in bilberry has not been studied before. This study was aimed to ...

Fjords are important high latitudes ecosystems, many have beside planctonic ones, a unique ecosystem associated with seasonal ice cover. During the development of the spring season conditions, two major type of primary producers contribute highly to the biomass production: sea-ice algae inhabiting brine channels and bottom surface of the ice (sympagic algae) and phytoplankton, living in the water ...

Philopatry influences the distribution of animals and can lead to the formation of kinship-based population structures when relatedness among individuals is tightly linked to their proximity. Two different polar bear ecotypes exist in the Barents Sea sub-population: “coastal” bears and “offshore” bears. Coastal bears remain year-round within the Svalbard archipelago whereas offshore bears follow the ...

World’s population growth and rise in food consumption per capita have led to increased food demand and overexploitation of natural resources in recent decades. Such increase has threatened the global feeding schemes to maintain a balance between food supply and demand. Although “The Blue Revolution” promised to fill such gap and simultaneously alleviate the overexploitation of the oceans, deterioration ...

Aquaculture worldwide is under constant scrutiny and financial pressure to maintain fish health, while providing an essential food source to a growing populace. To assist in monitoring mariculture sites and preventing harmful diseases, we tested a recently proposed method of trace pathogen detection using eDNA metabarcoding. The target pathogen, Paramoeba perurans, is the etiological agent of AGD, ...

Vestfjorden is an area of great ecological relevance since it is one of the main spawning areas of North East Atlantic cod. The survival rate of the cod larvae depends greatly on the abundance of zooplankton, which in turn depends on phytoplankton. Due to the extreme seasonality of high latitude fjords with a short productive season, understanding the phytoplankton distribution in spring is crucial. ...

Grafting is a widely used technique for propagation of plants in both agriculture and horticulture worldwide and involves combining two or more plants into one chimeric plant, ultimately with a shared vascular system. Benefits of grafting such as pathogen resistance, increase in fruit yield and abiotic stress tolerance have long been known, but the biological mechanisms of how plants graft are still ...