<p>Background: Consistent individual differences in behaviour, known as animal personalities, have been demonstrated within and across species. In fish, studies applying an animal personality approach have been used to resolve variation in physiological and molecular data suggesting a linkage, genotype-phenotype, between behaviour and transcriptome regulation. In this study, using three fish species ...

Solar light/dark cycles and seasonal photoperiods underpin daily and annual rhythms of life on Earth. Yet, the Arctic is characterized by several months of permanent illumination (“midnight sun”). To determine the persistence of 24h rhythms during the midnight sun, we investigated transcriptomic dynamics in the copepod <i>Calanus finmarchicus</i> during the summer solstice period in the Arctic, with ...

Organisms use circadian rhythms to anticipate and exploit daily environmental oscillations. While circadian rhythms are of clear importance for inhabitants of tropic and temperate latitudes, its role for permanent residents of the polar regions is less well understood. The high Arctic Svalbard ptarmigan shows behavioral rhythmicity in presence of light-dark cycles but is arrhythmic during the polar ...

Optical constituents in the ocean are often categorized as water, phytoplankton, sediments and dissolved matter. However, the optical properties of seawater are influenced, to some degree, by scattering and absorption by all particles in the water column. Here we assess the relevant size ranges for determining the optical properties of the ocean. We present a theoretical basis supporting the hypothesis ...

Subglacial upwelling of nutrient-rich bottom water is known to sustain elevated summer primary production in tidewater-glacier-influenced fjord systems. However, the importance of subglacial upwelling during the early spring season has not been considered yet. We hypothesized that subglacial discharge under sea ice is present in early spring and that its flux is sufficient to increase phytoplankton ...

<p>In the Arctic, seasonal patterns in seawater biochemical conditions are shaped by physical, chemical, and biological processes related to the alternation of seasons, i.e. winter polar night and summer midnight sun. In summertime, CO₂ concentration is driven by photosynthetic activity of autotrophs which raises seawater pH and carbonate saturation state (Ω). In addition, restriction of ...

<p>Climate warming influences structure and function of Arctic benthic ecosystems. Assessing the response of these systems to perturbations requires long-term studies addressing key ecological processes related to recolonization and succession of species. Based on unique time-series (1980–2017), this study addresses successional patterns of hard-bottom benthos in two fjords in NW Svalbard after a ...

Oman is a desert country in the south of the Middle East. Springs and other water sources that harbor aquatic organisms can be separated by hundreds of kilometers. In Oct 2019, we isolated four freshwater aquatic fungi (Chytridiomycota) from benthic detritus baited with pine pollen on a general nutrient medium near Salalah, Oman. Database queries of nuc 28S rRNA (28S) and internal transcribed spacer ...

Many birds nest in association with aggressive birds of other species to benefit from their protection against predators. We hypothesized that the protective effect also could extend to foraging resources, whereby the resultant resource-enriched habitats near a nest of aggressive raptors could be an alternative cause of associations between nesting bird species with non-overlapping foraging niches. ...

The European whitefish <i>Coregonus lavaretus</i> complex represents one of the most diverse radiations within salmonids, with extreme morphological and genetic differentiation across its range. Such variation has led to the assignment of many populations to separate species. In Great Britain, the seven native populations of <i>C. lavaretus</i> (two in Scotland, four in England, one in Wales) were ...