Author: Isabel Barrio

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PhD position on the genomics of Arctic invasion at NTNU University Museum, Trondheim

Deadline: May 9, 2025

The NTNU University Museum is seeking a highly qualified, ambitious, and motivated PhD candidate for a project focusing on genomics of Arctic alien plants. A warming climate, changes in soil properties, and rising human activity in the Arctic increase the probability of introduction and establishment of alien plant species. In high-Arctic Svalbard and other Arctic regions, the wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris) is an established alien species. Hypotheses for its success include multiple introductions from different genetic sources, enemy release advantage related to plant defense compounds, and shifts in adaptive traits.

Wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris) is an established alien species in Arctic regions (source: Atlas des plantes de France 1891)

The PhD project will develop genomic datasets, making use of field collections and herbarium resources, and have the possibility to develop experimental evidence to examine links between the genomic basis of successful establishment and potential invasiveness in the high-Arctic. The wintercress will be a primary focus of the project, but complementary research on parallel systems may be developed. The project will add an important evolutionary component to ongoing interdisciplinary research on Arctic greening.

The successful candidate will be employed at the NTNU University Museum’s Department of Natural History. The NTNU University Museum is the natural and cultural history museum of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. The Department of Natural History conducts research in systematics and taxonomy, evolutionary genomics, as well as in phylogeography, population genetics, and ecology with an emphasis on conservation biology. Your immediate leader will be the Head of Department.

The team of supervisors will consist of Ass. Prof. Kristine Bakke Westergaard (main supervisor), as well as co-supervisors Prof. Mike Martin and Dr. Simone Fior (ETH Zürich, Switzerland). The candidate will use the NTNU University Museum’s herbarium, genomics laboratory facilities and computational resources, and the work will be closely associated with a project on Arctic greening based at ETH Zürich. The work will also be part of the Nordic Borealization Network  that seeks to understand the processes, drivers, and consequences of changes in the species composition of tundra ecosystems.

More details can be found here: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/278168/phd-candidate-in-arctic-alien-plant-genomics

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Machine learning and herbarium specimens to assess changes in flowering phenology

A recent paper from the Machine Vision for Natural History research group at NTNU University Museum, including several NordBorN members, reports on global trends in flowering phenology, an indicator of the impact of anthropogenic climate change. A machine learning model was used to examine more than 8 million images of herbarium specimens from around the world and spanning two centuries. High diversity in temporal trends in flowering seasonality was found across different ecoregions, with greater variability at low latitudes than at high latitudes. This likely reflects the effects of a combination of shifts in temperature and precipitation seasonality, together with lower photoperiodic constraints to flowering. The study demonstrates the utility of machine learning approaches in large-scale analysis of museum collections and underscores both the importance of natural history collections in assessing long-term trends and the need for digitization efforts to make such specimens available to researchers across the world.

Future work is planned to link global flowering phenology patterns with local climate data, and to examine borealization by combining analysis of historical museum collections with data from field studies. You can read the paper here.

Reference: Williamson, D.R., Prestø, T., Westergaard, K.B., Trascau, B.M., Vange, V., Hassel, K., Koch, W. and Speed, J.D., Long‐term trends in global flowering phenology. New Phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70139

Image: Herbarium specimen of Leucanthemum maximum from the NTNU collection which was IDed by one of the co-authors

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NordBorN meeting in Aarhus 2025

The second NordBorN meeting was held in Denmark on March 25-27, 2025, hosted by our colleagues from Aarhus University. Twenty NordBorN members participated in the meeting in person, and others joined online for parts of the meeting. All the nine NordBorN partners were represented at the meeting.

One of the highlights of the meeting was the visit to the to the Mols Laboratory rewilding center, where we had the chance to learn more about rewilding efforts in Denmark and discuss borealization under the sun.

This year, we had the honour to host some guest researchers from Anglia Ruskin University who are studying the social implications of borealization. As well, during the meeting we had the opportunity to hear more about the research being done by our early career scientists, and to discuss future opportunities for collaboration.

Thanks again Niels, Efrén and Gala for a superb organization on the ground, and of course Mariana V for the endless support.

You can find relevant meeting documents here: