Background Reindeer herding in Norway is based on traditional Sámi pastoralism with the animals free ranging throughout the year. The animals move over large areas in varying terrain and often in challenging weather conditions. Winter crises, such as difficult grazing conditions caused by icing or large amounts of snow, are survival bottlenecks for reindeer. Calves are especially vulnerable, and ...

Camera traps are a powerful, practical, and non-invasive method used widely to monitor animal communities and evaluate management actions. However, camera trap arrays can generate thousands to millions of images that require significant time and effort to review. Computer vision has emerged as a tool to accelerate this image review process. We propose a multi-step, semi-automated workflow which ...

In the Arctic tundra, predators face recurrent periods of food scarcity and often turn to ungulate carcasses as an alternative food source. As important and localized resource patches, carrion promotes co-occurrence of different individuals, and its use by predators is likely to be affected by interspecific competition. We studied how interspecific competition and resource availability impact ...

The existence of ice-edge phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean is well described, yet direct observations of the mechanisms of phytoplankton bloom development following seasonal sea-ice melt remain scarce. This study constrains such responses using biological and biogeochemical datasets collected along a coastal-to-offshore transect that bisects the receding sea-ice zone in the Kong Håkon VII ...

Background Plankton is the essential ecological category that occupies the lower levels of aquatic trophic networks, representing a good indicator of environmental change. However, most studies deal with distribution of single species or taxa and do not take into account the complex of biological interactions of the real world that rule the ecological processes.<p> <p>Results This study focused ...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was applied to determine the sex of polar cod (Boreogadus saida Lepechin, 1774) (Actinopterygii: Gadidae) and to follow the gonadal development in individual animals over time. Individual unanaesthetised fish were transferred to a measurement chamber inside a preclinical 9.4 T MRI scanner and continuously perfused with aerated seawater. A screening procedure at ...

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived ...

In this study diet width and overlap between 0-group saithe (Pollachius virens) and 0-group cod (Gadhus morhua) was studied. Along with studying if habitat characteristics, length of the fish (cod and saithe), fjord distance, predator specie (cod or saithe) had an impact on the diet composition of the sampled fishes. A diet comparison between my diet findings and findings in earlier studies. The ...

The microphytobenthos (MPB), defined as the microscopic photosynthesizers inhabiting sediments in marine and estuarine environments, are a vital component to intertidal ecosystems. They contribute greatly to ecosystem services in many ways and are responsible for a high amount of primary productivity in their environments. Microphytobenthic abundance and community structure studies have been increasing ...

Species inhabiting cold-water environments exhibit typically slower growth and a longer lifespan than warm-water species, implying a slowed ability to recover from natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Longevity estimates for species inhabiting the Arctic region are sparse, despite the ongoing changes and disturbances in the region. Brittle stars (Ophiuroidea) often dominate Arctic shelf ...