Wetlands are severely affected by human development. About 50 % of their original global extent has been lost, their populations of plants and animals have declined faster than for any other ecosystem, and 25 % of wetland-dependent species are threatened. As the main reason for these declines is habitat loss, often caused by infrastructure development, it is critical to develop conservation strategies ...

The release of red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus) into the Barents Sea by Russian scientists in the 1960s had the goal of establishing a self-sustaining stock for the purpose of commercial harvest. The red king crab has been successfully established as a stock in Norwegian waters where it has become an important commercial resource in the eastern regions of Finnmark. The Norwegian red king ...

The use of lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus L.) as cleaner fish in salmonid aquaculture for the biological control of sea lice infestation levels has increased in recent years. The species is relatively new to aquaculture and susceptible to various infectious agents. The health situation for lumpfish is currently considered poor, indicating the necessity for developing more efficient vaccines. Studying ...

Snow exerts key controls on many aspects of plant ecology in the Arctic, including community composition. With climate predictions forecasting dramatic changes in winter climate and snow cover in the Arctic in the near future, it is important to improve our understanding of snow effects on plant communities in these regions. This study used a snow depth manipulation experiment established in 2006 ...

The Arctic is an area predicted to be strongly affected by climate change, and the extent of permafrost is expected to decrease. The insulating capacity of bryophytes is central in permafrost preservation. In High-Arctic Svalbard, disturbance by geese through grubbing may damage and remove parts of the bryophyte layer in moss tundra. The disruption is expected to lead to increased soil temperatures ...

Calanus copepods C. finmarchicus, C. glacialis and C. hyperboreus are keystone species in the Arctic marine ecosystem, constituting 70-90% of the zooplankton biomass. In high latitudes, the growing season is short and unpredictable, and the winter long and unproductive. These species have adapted flexible life histories, lipid accumulation, and a state of deep-water diapause to survive. Winter ...

The Arctic is warming rapidly. Atmospheric temperatures in the Barents Sea region are increasing 5 – 7 times faster than the global average. As a result, Arctic sea ice extent is declining by nearly 12% per decade during the summer months. The study site in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard, has been mostly ice free since 2006. These changes in the physical environment likely affect the ecology of coastal ...

<p>Many species of small copepods are morphologically similar and thus often grouped together at genus level rather than studied as individual species. However, species within the same genus may differ quite a lot in life history strategies and traits. In this study, I used a species-specific polymerase chain reaction to explore the abundance, distribution and size range of <i>Pseudocalanus</i> ...

Flower visitation by flying arthropods has mainly been studied by direct human observation, which usually neglects seasonal development of flower abundance even though this is known to be important for visitor dynamics and match between trophic levels. In the present study, the arthropod visitor community focusing on Diptera was investigated on the cushion plant Silene acaulis (L.) Jacq. in relation ...

Sea ice provides an important habitat for sea ice algae, the main primary producers in sea ice covered ocean areas. In order to reliably estimate sea ice algal distribution and production, it is important to develop remote sensing methods that can provide these estimates with minimal coring. Underwater hyperspectral imagers (UHI) can capture fine-scale variability in the transmitted spectral profile ...