Despite being sessile, plants nonetheless forage for resources by modulating their growth. Adaptative foraging in response to changes in resource availability and presence of neighbours has strong implications for performance and fitness. It is an even more pressing issue for parasitic plants, which draw resources directly from other plants. Indeed, parasitic plants were demonstrated over the years ...

To maintain normal neuronal function, the mammalian brain requires a constant supply of energy. The deep-diving hooded seal (<i>Cystophora cristata</i>) brain exhibits remarkable tolerance to extreme hypoxia, presumably involving a reduction in brain activity to lower energy demand. Thus, some neurons, circuits or even regions in the seal’s brain presumably display a neural protective shutdown ...

There is a push for transition to sustainable blue food systems in the High North. An interdisciplinary group of Fram Centre researchers have looked closer at the drivers motivating the transition and identified a set of barriers to sustainable blue food systems in northern Norway.

The Early Miocene Upper Marine Molasse (OMM) in south-western Germany contains a diverse fossil ecosystem in which elasmobranch teeth are especially abundant. However, the scarcity of outcrops and sometimes poor preservation of fossils resulted in scant recent literature about the OMM. Here, we focus on the elasmobranch fauna to determine the trophic relationships within the OMM, using fossil ...

Ruminants are dependent on their gut microbiomes for nutrient extraction from plant diets. However, knowledge about the composition, diversity, function, and spatial structure of gut microbiomes, especially in wild ruminants, is limited, largely because analysis has been restricted to faeces or the rumen. In two geographically separated reindeer subspecies, 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing revealed ...

Strong seasonality is a key feature of high-latitude systems like the Barents Sea. While the interannual variability and long-term changes of the Barents Sea are well-documented, the seasonal progression of the physical and biological systems is less known, mainly due to poor accessibility of the seasonally ice-covered area in winter and spring. Here, we use an extensive set of physical and biological ...

Seasonal rhythms in humans are fascinating but studying them is inherently challenging due to the need for data that covers multiple years. Due to the experimental obstacles, it remains debated whether humans exhibit seasonal fluctuations in aspects such as activity levels and libido. To approach these topics through indirect digital measures, this thesis used multi-year data from Google Trends ...

In 2019, a new species of sucking louse was observed in arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus) on Svalbard and Northern Canada. Abnormal patterns of fur loss, inconsistent with normal moult, were observed across the neck, shoulders and back, raising concerns as to how the animals would cope with damaged fur during the cold Arctic winter. This study investigates the impact of these lice on Svalbard arctic ...

Polyploidization can be a rapid path to speciation and is considered an important evolutionary mechanism. Some predict that all plants have undergone a polyploidization event during their evolutionary history, and the frequency of polyploid species increases with latitude. The Arctic-Alpine Saxifraga oppositifolia, an autopolyploid, has two polyploids that have successfully established themselves ...

The brain is highly dependent on oxygen for its metabolism and, in most mammals, major brain dysfunction occurs already within minutes of insufficient oxygen supply (hypoxia). Oxygen is the final electron acceptor in the electron transport system that drives the production of ATP through oxidative phosphorylation in the mitochondria. The rate at which oxidative phosphorylation produces ATP is dependent ...