This PhD deals with spatial and temporal community patterns in Barents Sea marine food webs and benthic communities in Svalbard. A main aim of this PhD project has been to study how community and food-web structure changes along environmental and climatic gradients, and to elucidate how species respond to climate warming in the Arctic. We used network analysis to study how the network of who eats ...

The research focus for this dissertation is marine tourism fisheries – a sector rapidly growing in popularity in Northern Norway. Data from this research study suggest that the ecological impacts may be more significant than previously thought. As such, it is suggested that marine tourism fisheries be considered separately from recreational fishing, and alongside commercial-scale and small-scale ...

Planktonic early life stages of marine benthic invertebrates play an important role in dispersal and at times represent a substantial proportion of the zooplankton. Information about the larval communities present on the Arctic inflow shelves of the Barents and Chukchi Seas, however, is incomplete and limited because of infrequent sampling and low resolution of identification. The aims of the work ...

Arctic peatlands store more than one sixth of the soil organic carbon (SOC) on Earth. Microorganisms decompose SOC, leading to the production of the greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Large temperature increases are predicted in the Arctic towards the end of the century (1–6 °C in summer and 2–11 °C in winter). How the microorganisms in Arctic peatlands will respond to this ...

Studying the spatial patterns of microbial diversity is crucial in order to assess the relationship between community structure and ecosystem function. However, due to methodological limitations in the past, relatively little has been known about the biogeography of microbial communities. The introduction of next generation sequencing technologies from 2005 was a game changer, as DNA sequencing ...

<p>Microbial eukaryotes, including protists and fungi, play diverse functions in virtually all ecosystems. In the High Arctic, their high biomass and diversity reflects crucial ecological importance and the performance of key ecological processes. Protists are the main primary producers in arctic seas, whereas fungi are an important group of decomposers and symbiotic partners of plants in terrestrial ...

Identifying drivers of population trends in migratory species is difficult, as they can face many stressors while moving through different areas and environments during the annual cycle. Their population response to environmental change may in addition be affected by consistent differences in individual behaviour, which are widespread in free-living populations. An understanding of the structure of ...

This study first discusses and tests the strength and possible different forms of the relationships between satisfaction and loyalty. Secondly, it focuses on if, and how, satisfaction strength properties (e.g. involvement, ambivalence, knowledge, and certainty) moderate the satisfaction–loyalty relationship. It also extends to discuss and test the role of perceived risk in the satisfaction–loyalty ...

In this thesis I have used a variety of study methods at different spatial and temporal scales to explore population processes and management of 2 bird species of conservation concern, common eider and Slavonian grebe, focusing particularly on the role of nest predation in declining populations. I have demonstrated the role of proximate and ultimate causes of nest loss in eider at 2 declining colonies ...