This thesis addresses the lack of knowledge production on impacts of new marine industries on coastal Sami culture in the Norwegian coastal zone. It asks how Sami culture matters in contemporary Norwegian marine governance, and discusses how ecosystem mapping practices facilitate knowledge production on Sami relations and use of the marine environment. This is done through five papers and a film, ...

How new species are formed is still a major question in evolutionary biology. In ecological speciation, natural selection drives the evolution of slight distinctions between individuals into extensive differences between species. In this thesis, early stages of an ecologically driven speciation process are addressed using ecological and morphological data from a large number of European whitefish ...

Small rodents are key herbivores of arctic ecosystems, where their cyclic population dynamics have important implications for vegetation dynamics. The role of vegetation for shaping small rodent population dynamics remains, however, unclear. Evaluation of this interaction has been greatly hampered by the rather fragmentary knowledge of small rodents feeding ecology, which in turn is due to methodological ...

The waters south and north of Iceland vary greatly both oceanographically and biologically with the rather stable and warm Atlantic waters south and west of Iceland and the more variable and cold Arctic and sub-Arctic waters, north and east of Iceland. The aim of this study was to increase the knowledge on the role of Calanus copepods and trophic relations of the key components of the oceanic ...

The multiannual population cycles in small rodents have triggered an intense debate between proponents of population-intrinsic and community-extrinsic factors as the cycle generating mechanisms. A well-known challenge is the apparent absence of vole individuals during the low phase of the population cycle and the fact that most studies addressing vole and lemming behaviour and demography are conducted ...

An important aspect of ecological research is to provide guidelines and tools to wildlife managers. The ecological feature of density dependence which shapes population responses to harvest are important for wildlife management, but monitoring practices and exploiter dynamics to the changing resources and management regimes should also be included. Bag records are often collected by wildlife managers ...

Polar bears in the Barents Sea population have been protected from hunting in Russia since 1956 and following the signing of the international Polar Bear Agreement in 1973 in Norway. This thesis seeks to summarise current knowledge on key population biology issues four decades after the Norwegian protection and almost six after the Russian. Further, it discusses threats that have developed in the ...

Anglerfish Lophius piscatorius has during the last two decades become a highly exploited resource and is now one of the five most economically important demersal fish species in the Faroese fishery. Despite this, there is at present little information available on the population status of anglerfish in Faroese waters. The main aim of this study is to increase the biological knowledge of anglerfish ...

The aim of this PhD-project has been to increase our knowledge of trophic interactions along altitudinal gradients in a system of sympatric, cyclically outbreaking geometrid moth species in sub-arctic, coastal birch forest in northern Norway. The project resulted in four scientific publications; two sub-studies focused on the causal effect of natural enemies on the observed complex spatio-temporal ...

Many seabird populations have declined dramatically over recent decades, and studying the demography and population dynamic in seabird populations is important to gaining a better understanding of causes and mechanisms lying behind such changes and to identify targets for conservation and management. Climate and prey availability are known to affect demography and population dynamics of seabirds. ...