Reindeer is an iconic species in the Arctic and subarctic but populations are declining. An environmental quality standard for reindeer populations assess their overall status (poor, medium, and good...

Contraception has traditionally been used on domesticated and captive animals, but it has also found increasing application in locally overabundant wildlife species. Different immunocontraceptives are...

Natal dispersal is a key life history trait determining fitness and driving population dynamics, genetic structure, and species distributions. Despite existing evidence that not all phenotypes are eq...

Background Whole-genome sequencing efforts, have during the past decade, unveiled the central role of genomic rearrangements—such as chromosomal inversions—in evolutionary processes, including local a...

Background Whole-genome sequencing efforts, have during the past decade, unveiled the central role of genomic rearrangements—such as chromosomal inversions—in evolutionary processes, including local a...

Genregulering som lot oss utvikle fingre, ble først brukt å danne rumpehull hos fisk.

Inga Angelica Frøland Steindal has been accepted as a new member of The Young Academy of Norway. Inga is a researcher at the Center for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) at the Department o...

Background While ants are textbook examples of eusocial animals in which altruistic behavior is maintained through kin selection, several ants form genetically diverse colonies that challenge this concept. One example is the Australian green-head ant (Rhytidoponera metallica) whose colonies harbor such extreme genetic variation that they have been speculated to represent an unstable form of eusociality. Yet, R. metallica is among the most successful ants on the Australian subcontinent. This success has been hypothesized to be partly due to the diverse venoms harbored within each colony. However, the genomic basis and evolutionary scenarios that maintain this toxin diversity remain unknown. Results To examine toxin genomic architecture, quantify individual-level genetic variation, and identify both proximate and ultimate mechanisms that have facilitated the toxin diversity in R. metallica, we generate a high-quality draft genome from a single worker. Most ectatotoxin genes are in clusters that contain evidence of multiple, complex gene-family expansions, some of which are likely explained by the presence of transposable elements. We also show that toxin regions of the genome exhibit elevated genetic variation despite being under strong selection and that this variation can translate to phenotypic diversity through toxin alleles with different functional properties. Conclusions Taken together, our results point to classical gene duplication and diversification as the main evolutionary mechanism by which the main toxin family in ant venoms evolves, suggest toxin-gene functional diversification under frequency-dependent selection maintains colony-level venom hypervariability in R. metallica, and provide new insight into the role of multi-level selection in eusocial animals.

Abstract. The Arctic has been the scene for (re)colonization, diversification, and adaptation of boreal and Arctic fauna. As anthropogenic warming of the A

Skogens konge har liten krone sammenliknet med det regaliet den irske kjempehjorten bar.

Forskere har påvist pestbakterien i en massegrav i Jordan.

Here, the authors provide a critical view of historical approaches to categorize microbial transmission in early life, and present a conceptual framework to capture the multifaceted nature of human mi...

Lanternfishes (Myctophidae) are one of the most abundant and species diverse orders inhabiting the mesopelagic zone. Exploitation of marine resources has recently attracted increased interest. It is t...

Norge skal fortsatt være en av verdens fremste polarforskningsnasjoner. Det er viktig for å ivareta Norges sikkerhet og geopolitiske interesser, og for å håndtere og forstå raske klimaendringer. Derfo...

Skreien er annerledes i dag enn for 100 år siden. Torsken er ikke genmanipulert. Endringene er menneskeskapte, ifølge ny forskning.

Open lectures on biodiversity from ants to ocean life, and how taxonomy helps us understand ecology and evolution. With Corrie S. Moreau, Cornell University, and Torsten H. Struck, University of Oslo.

Job title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Epidemiological modelling (Plague) (284120), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Retrospective assessment of the iconic migratory Atlantic cod uncovers human-induced genome-wide changes during the last century.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Nå er den borte. Forskerne advarer om pågående kollaps av de lokale torskebestandene.