Month: March 2026
Ambitious Experiment Discovers ‘Flipped’ Genetic Secrets of a Small Fish
Hannes visits Emma’s sand lance experiment in Norway
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Vancouver, 15 March 2026. Hannes spent 3 beautifully intense days at the University of British Columbia, following an invitation by Profs. Andrea Frommel and Colin Brauner to talk at their Comparative Physiology seminar series about our soon to be published synthesis work on black sea bass overwinter migrations. Thank you Andrea, for the comfortable stay at your house and thanks to all the faculty and students who generously shared their time to meet and talk about our respective research experiences. Thank you, Colin, for showing me the aquatic research facilities and the biodiversity center!
When a species lives in two distinct types of habitats, individuals with traits better suited to each habitat will thrive and reproduce, naturally selecting descendants with those traits. But what about mobile, aquatic species that live across a broad range of temperatures and latitudes? How do they maintain their genetic differences if individuals are free to mix and interbreed?
New research published on 5 March 2026 in Science finds that chromosomal inversions – which occur when a chunk of chromosome containing tens to thousands of genes breaks off, flips 180 degrees and reattaches to the same chromosome – play a central role in shaping these advantageous adaptations.
Read the whole story at UConn Today (9 March 2026)
1 March 2026. Hannes just returned from a weeklong trip to Norway, where he spread the word about our lab's sand lance research to colleagues and the Water Research Institute (NIVA) in Oslo and the Marine Research Institute (IMR) in Austevoll near Bergen.
Austevoll, the world-famous marine research station, has also been PhD student Emma Siegfried's home for the past 2 1/2 months. Emma became the first US recipient of a European Union exchange fellowship (AQUASERV program) that covered the costs of her stay and her research in Norway. The goal of her project is to rear embryos of a local sand lance species, the Lesser sandeel Ammodytes marinus, under different levels of CO2 to then compare the results to what is already known for the Northern sand lance A. dubius on the western side of the Atlantic ocean.
Emma's experiment has been a success so far, thanks in no small part to the incredible help of our Norwegian collaborators. Every one at the station has been welcoming, friendly and eager to show us the large-scale aquaculture research on cod, halibut, haddock, plaice and many other fish species that is being conducted here every day of the year.
As we gape at the impressive tanks and installations, as we chat eagerly about deepening our collaborative ties and enjoy Norwegian hospitality and nature, we feel that this may indeed be the beginning of another great chapter of sand lance science to come.
Emma returns to the US on 12. March 2026, eager to work up the collected data and tell her peers about the experience.