Summary
Tropical coral reefs are hotspots of marine biodiversity and productivity. Coral reef formation and functioning is attributed to their main ecosystem engineers, the reef-building corals, and their intimate symbiosis with intracellular dinoflagellate algae. This efficient nutrient-exchange symbiosis forms the functional foundation for the ecological success of coral reefs over millions of years. Unfortunately, the effects of global climate change increasingly undermine the benefits of this important symbiosis, resulting in a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘coral bleaching’, which is responsible for the unprecedented large-scale degradation of coral reefs around the globe. In addition to the widely studied coral-algae symbiosis, a plethora of other microbes are associated with corals, including other microeukaryotes, prokaryotes, and viruses. While this ‘coral microbiome’ is proposed to contribute to the health, resilience, and adaptation of corals to global environmental change, we still have only a poor understanding of the potentially complex interactions of coral associated microbes with their hosts, with each other, and their implication for coral and reef functioning. As such, integrating chemical ecology approaches into traditional culture-dependent and Next-Generation ‘omics’ applications will help further our understanding of complex host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions in corals, and may inform meaningful management actions to help coral reefs persist in the Anthropocene.
Brief biography
2013-2016 PhD in Marine Biology (University of Bremen, Germany): responses of coral ecophysiology, biogeochemistry, and the associated microbiome to excess organic carbon pollution.
2017-2019 Postdoc: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia; coral host-microbe interactions: the role of Endozoicomonas in host health and adaptation.
2019-2021 Postdoc: University of Konstanz, Germany; coral host-microbe interactions: the role of Endozoicomonas in host health and adaptation.
2021-2023: Postdoc: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland; the role of osmoregulation in symbiotic nutrient cycling in Cnidaria.
Since 2023: TT Junior Full Professor at the CRIOBE, Université de Perpignan Via domitia, France: Molecular and Chemical Ecology of marine host-microbe interactions.