Sampling flies above the artic circle in Norway

# posted by Maren Wellenreuther

Hanna and I are in northern Norway to sample populations of seaweed flies (Coelopa frigida). As the name indicates, these flies live on seaweed that has been washed up on the shore and form wracks. The temperature in these wrackbeds can easily be 30 degrees above the ambient temperature and it is therefore no surprise that you can find these flies thriving year round, even in these northern latitudes. We are interested in how the flies manage to survive in different habitats (e.g. gradients in salinity, exposure, extremes of temperatures), and are planning to compare populations in southern Sweden with populations in northern Norway. Comparisons will entail genomic and transcriptomics analyses of adult and larval life stages, and experiments testing fitness in different habitats. 

We arrived on Tuesday and have been studying the maps of the coastline to find stretches that are exposed to ocean swell, which is needed for the accumulation of wrack. The expansive fjords that characterize the landscape in this part of Scandinavia make is hard to get to the outer coast, and the journey from one side to the fjord to the other typically leads over numerous tunnels and bridges that seem to disappear in the sky. Snow covered mountains are framing the view wherever we go and the temperatures that we have experienced during the days have ranged from -15 to  +7. All in all, this part of the world is full of extremes and stunning beauty.

Yesterday we found our first population. We traveled all day to an exposed stretch of coastline north of the town Bodo, which is only accessible with a short ferry journey. At the very end of the fjord we found an 80 cm deep wrack, and surely enough, seaweed flies were abundant at that site too. It had just been raining heavily with gale force winds, so all adults were hiding among the wrack.

The flies were cold and did not move at all, which made sampling easy, because we could literally pick the flies up by hand and drop them into the Eppendorf’s. At the end of the sampling the rain and wind stopped, and within minutes all the flies came out and ‘basked’ in the light.

All the best to Lund and happy greetings from the Lofoten!

Anna Runemark receives postdoctoral research grant from the Swedish Research Council

It is with great pleasure and happiness that we note that Anna Runemark, who defended her PhD-student in May earlier this year, has received a prestiguous postdoctoral grant from The Swedish Research Council (VR). Congratulations Anna! This requires celebration with some sparkling wine at tomorrow's lab-meeting (December 11 at 10.30). The new postdoctoral grant system means that Anna will be employed at the Biology Department in Lund, being part of our lab, but will work abroad at the University of Oslo (Norway) for two of the coming three years. She will then perform research on the genomic consequences of homoploid hybridization among Passer-sparrows in southern Europe. 

Anna's achievement is well-deserved and impressive, particularly in the light of the severe competition for such grants (23 % success rate). To my knowledge, Anna was the only evolutionary biologist this year who got such a postdoc among the natural sciences in Sweden. Anna's achievement is hers, and hers only, but as a former PhD-advisor I do of course take some pride too, and takes the opportunity to boost my already big ego a bit further. I am glad that Anna keeps up my good statistics in terms of former PhD-students who get VR-postdocs: She is number five, out of five in total, resulting in a 100 % success rate (future students in this lab should take it as an encouragement and not feel stressed about it, I hope). 

We also have several other reasons to celebrate tomorrow: our postdoc Maren Wellenreuther got a "Junior Researcher" grant from VR earlier in November this year, and I myself also got a four-year grant from the same agency. Further, Jessica Abbott recently got 380 000 SEK for  buying equipment to the fly lab, and Maren got 100 000 SEK from the "Nilsson-Ehle Foundation". All in all a very successful year for the lab members in terms o grants, and hopefully this will continue in the near future. 

These are achievements we all should be proud of, whether we actually got a grant or not ourselves, as research is a collective enterprise and scientists do not work in isolation. One colleague's success can largely be attributed to his/her colleagues too, who have contributed to create an intellectually and scientifically stimulating research environment, and this is true whether you are a PhD-advisor, professor, lecturer, postdoc, PhD- or Master's student.