The highly adapted parasitic plants of the genus Cuscuta infect other plants to steal their water and nutrients. They do so by developing specialized organs called haustoria that grow into the tissue of the host plant establishing interspecies connections through which the parasite feeds. Although it has long since been suggested that some manner of modification to host cell walls is necessary to ...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are often established for conservation objectives. Benefits provided by MPAs exceed pure biodiversity conservation as they may include contributions to social and economic benefits of local communities. And though it is still debated, MPAs may provide a management tool for sustainable fisheries and/or solving conflicts of interests between users of marine resources. It ...

The present study was aimed at investigating northern diatoms as sustainable sources of omega-3 fatty acids widely used and now much needed in salmon aquaculture as well as ingredients to be used in nutraceuticals in the human diet. As known, fish oil is currently the main source of physiologically requisite fatty acids such as eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acids (DHA). Due to the rapid ...

The temporal dynamics of meroplankton, manly comprised of larvae of benthic invertebrates that only temporarily inhabit the pelagic environment, is poorly understood in Arctic environments. The main objective of this thesis was to increase our knowledge on meroplankton dynamics and their ecological role in the Arctic marine coastal ecosystem. Three different approaches including high-frequency field ...

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has become a serious global problem. Infections that once were easily cured with antibiotics have now become nearly impossible to treat. Thus, there is a desperate need for new antibacterial drugs. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a diverse group of compounds. Amongst their unique features are their ability to kill bacteria (often both Gram-positive and Gram-negative) ...

Biological invasions are a major challenge facing coastal waters and increasingly threaten high-latitude environments. The red king crab is one of the world’s largest decapods and was introduced into the Barents Sea in the 1960s. It has since become a valuable fishery resource in Russian and Norwegian waters. In the early 2000s, red king crabs entered Porsangerfjord, which now holds one of the ...

The phenological adaptation of herbivorous insects in the Arctic may be particularly prone to the negative impact of the current global climate change. Increasing temporal dissociation with their plant resources, and to their natural enemies such as parasitoids may be detrimental for their survival. The life history adaptations for gall-inducing sawflies in the Arctic (Tenthredinidae: Nematinae: ...

In the pelagic system, phytoplankton are the main producers of n-3 LC-PUFA and make up the foundation of the oceanic food web. Zooplankton, such as copepods and krill, are the most numerous primary consumers in the marine environment and have a central role in the energy transfer to higher trophic levels. The copepod Calanus finmarchicus is present in large amounts in the North Atlantic and has ...

This PhD deals with spatial and temporal community patterns in Barents Sea marine food webs and benthic communities in Svalbard. A main aim of this PhD project has been to study how community and food-web structure changes along environmental and climatic gradients, and to elucidate how species respond to climate warming in the Arctic. We used network analysis to study how the network of who eats ...

Fish farming has been considered the importance resource for supplying food for the global requirement. Norway by far is the country that produces the most salmon in the world, and virus disease is one of the major problems that causes the economic loss in fish farming. For combating the diseases, the vaccine has been developed. In Norway, traditional vaccines based on inactivated virus are ...