National Centre for Biosystematics

The current knowledge of species diversity is far from sufficient to meet the society's urgent needs for proper management of biodiversity and for identifying organisms that can be utilized in biotechnology. NHM has the scientific competence and the large st collections in Norway, and will integrate its research on plants, fungi, animals, and fossils by co-funding a permanent research centre, initiated by this Strategic University Programme. Studies across the tree of life are now revolutionized by develop ments in genomics, bioinformatics, and classification theory. The centre activities will be nested on this new platform in multiuser facilities to create interdisciplinary synergy effects. Basic problems will be addressed by merging our competences in mol ecular systematics and field- and collection-based taxonomy, and we will contribute to the development of genomic markers for partly degraded DNA in museum specimens. We will initially focus on organisms that are poorly known and rele