Using artificial fertilization, I crossed frogs from different populations to evaluate fitness consequences for the offspring from an inbreeding-outbreeding perspective, and to evaluate quantitative genetic effects on ...

Background and aims: The growth hormone-insulin-like growth factor I (GH-IGF-I) system is known to act during sexual maturation of female salmonids, but the specific roles are not known. Somatolactin (SL) is a pituitary ...

Some Bosmina and Daphnia species have the ability to develop extreme morphological antipredator defences, such as long antennules, high carapaces and helmets. The relative sizes of these plastic traits may differ substantially ...

When whales die and sink to the sea-floor, they provide a sudden, enormous food supply to organisms in the vicinity. At first, larger mobile scavengers remove the flesh, but also when only the bones remain, the whale-fall ...

Background and aims: Early environmental conditions are known to influence the phenotypic development of animals, including behavioural alterations. The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the effects of density, ...

Polychaetes are a large group of segmented worms that display an enormous morphological diversity. Molecular data has shown in recent years that groups previously thought to be separate from polychaetes are actually part ...

In this thesis I explore how sexual selection, sexual conflicts, coevolution with parental care and an environmental selective agent (hypoxia) affect the evolution of different egg characteristics and embryo survival and ...

Bryozoa is a group of aquatic, sessile invertebrates with circumglobal distribution and includes about 6000 recent species. Bryozoans have an indirect life cycle with a larval stage that settles and metamorphoses into the ...

Although sexual selection for elaborate signals is well documented in numerous species, the extreme diversity in signal design and expression in many taxa is largely unexplained. This thesis explores phylogenetic, mechanistic ...

Abstract: Systematics based on genetic data has both confirmed and contradicted earlier, morphologically defined species and their relatedness. Morphology does not always correspond to genetic lineages, and this will ...