Ecological models have been criticized for a lack of validation of their temporal transferability. Here we answer this call by investigating the temporal transferability of a dynamic state-space model developed to estimate season-dependent biotic and climatic predictors of spatial variability in outbreak abundance of the Norwegian lemming. Modelled summer and winter dynamics parametrized by spatial ...

The largest contribution of oceanic heat to the Arctic Ocean is the warm Atlantic Water (AW) inflow through the deep Fram Strait. The AW current also carries Atlantic plankton into the Arctic Basin and this inflow of zooplankton biomass through the Atlantic-Arctic gateway far exceeds the inflow through the shallow Pacific-Arctic gateway. However, because this transport has not yet been adequately ...

In 2015, The Norwegian Environment Agency requested the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food Safety (VKM) to provide a scientific assessment of the information requirements laid down in the declaration form for the Regulation on microbial products and its guidelines, if these are sufficient to conduct a health and environmental risk assessment of the use of microbial cleaning products in ...

Visually-oriented predators, such as seabirds, are highly light dependent, and thus their presence and activity under continuously dark conditions of Arctic polar night pose a number of questions about the strategies and mechanisms they use to find prey. Here, opportunistic observations of the behaviors of Thick-billed Murres (Uria lomvia; n = 4) and juvenile Black Guillemots (Cepphus grylle; n ...

The Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food Safety (VKM) was requested by the Norwegian Environment Agency in November 2015 to develop a knowledge base for assessment of the environmental risks related to the use of genetically modified (GM) virus vaccine vectors for vaccination of domesticated animals. The Agency requested that the task be conducted in the form of a desk study with the following ...

Dense brittle star assemblages dominate vast areas of the Arctic marine shelves, making them key components of Arctic ecosystem. This study is the first to determine the population dynamics of the dominant shelf brittle star species, <i>Ophiura sarsii</i> and <i>Ophiocten sericeum</i>, through age determination, individual production and total turnover rate (P:B). In the summer of 2013, <i>O. ...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional ...

Highly cellulolytic bacterial species such as <i>Ruminococcus flavefaciens</i> are regarded essential for the microbial breakdown of cellulose in the rumen. We have investigated the effect of ruminal dosing of <i>R. flavefaciens</i> strain 8/94-32 during realimentation of starved reindeer (males, n = 3). Microbiome function measured as in situ digestion of cellulose and food pellets (percent DMD; ...

The European Sector of the Arctic Ocean is characterized by low CO₂ concentrations in seawater during spring and summer, largely due to strong biological uptake driven by extensive plankton blooms in spring. The spring plankton bloom is eventually terminated by nutrient depletion and grazing. However, low CO₂ concentrations in seawater and low atmospheric resupply of CO₂ ...

Bilberry (<i>Vaccinium myrtillus</i> L.) fruits are an excellent natural resource for human diet because of their special flavor, taste and nutritional value as well as medical properties. Bilberries are recognized for their high anthocyanin content and many of the genes involved in the anthocyanin biosynthesis have been characterized. So far, neither genomic nor RNA-seq data have been available for ...