Research Project - Food Webs across the Blue Web: Modelling Connectivity among Coral Reefs, Mangroves, and Seagrass Beds in the Indo-Pacific
The Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) is the largest marine research centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). It is also the first marine science centre to be accredited as a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence, a recognition to the institution’s leadership in the field of marine research in Spain and to its commitment to create social impact.
Our goal is to develop research of excellence to inspire a society in harmony with the blue planet, in line with the values of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).
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Project description
Mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass beds are among the most productive and valuable coastal ecosystems on Earth, and across the tropical Indo-Pacific they often occur as tightly interlinked seascapes. Organisms, nutrients, sediments, and carbon move among these habitats, so the functioning and resilience of each one depends on the condition of the others. Yet coastal management and most ecosystem models still treat these habitats in isolation, which limits our ability to anticipate how local pressures, such as fishing, land-based pollution, and habitat loss, interact with climate change and propagate across the seascape.
This PhD will develop ecosystem models of coral reef–mangrove–seagrass systems at study sites in Indonesia, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste, to study the connectivity between these systems, and their synergistic interaction. A central part of the work will be integrating heterogeneous biological, biophysical, and socio-economic data on community composition, organismic and sediment connectivity, blue carbon, and human uses, into qualitative and quantitative ecosystem models. These will be used to provide a modelling framework to explore management and global change scenarios in connected coastal seascapes, bringing results from multiple disciplines into policy-relevant tools that support integrated, connectivity-aware regional coastal management.
Hosting research team
The candidate will join the iMARES research group, based at the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona, a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence. iMARES has an internationally recognised track record in food-web ecosystem modelling of marine ecosystems worldwide. The candidate will receive training in ecosystem modelling, quantitative ecology, and science communication, within a collaborative group of senior researchers, postdocs, and PhD students.
The thesis is part of m-CONNECT project (Management of Coastal Networks Nurtured through Ecosystem assessment, Collaboration & Technology), a transdisciplinary consortium funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme (HORIZON-CL6-2025-01-BIODIV-07). m-CONNECT brings together researchers, Indigenous and local communities, and policy actors to understand how connectivity among coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass beds supports their ecosystem services, and to translate this knowledge into management, restoration, and monitoring solutions. The candidate will be co-supervised by Sebastian Ferse at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT, Bremen, Germany), where a research stay is planned, and will work alongside the other PhD students of the project.
The candidate must meet the eligibility requirements to apply for the FPU fellowship.
Application procedure
Interested candidates please contact the supervisors at: