Protecting Nature with Nature - Nature-based Solutions to Improve Marine Ecosystem Health

Ecosystems are threatened by anthropogenic impacts - climate change, eutrophication and pollution with chemicals and pathogens. This could lead to reduced resilience of organisms or increased virulence of pathogens, potentially resulting in disease outbreaks and mortality. This doesn’t only threaten biodiversity but may also pose risks to human health.

Interestingly, various ecosystems can have a buffering or filtering role, and can thereby help protect nearby ecosystems. For example, we discovered that seagrass meadows remove pathogenic bacteria from seawater and consequently prevent disease in nearby coral reef ecosystems (Lamb et al. 2017). And other ecosystems play crucial roles in biogeochemical cycling and can remove excess nutrients.

We study the protective ecosystem services that are provided by ecosystems that are founded by ecosystem engineers - species that modify their local environment and provide habitat for other species, thereby creating biodiversity hotspots (e.g., shellfish and coral reefs, seagrass meadows). To this end, we use a holistic approach, including ecological and ecophysiological methods as well as molecular/microbial ecology techniques (including ‘omics and bioinformatics).

This research program is built with the One Health concept in mind. We investigate how interspecies interactions influence the health of ecosystem engineers, and how different ecosystems facilitate and protect one another by improving environmental conditions. Health-boosting ecosystem services may have potential to be used as Nature-based Solutions to improve ocean health and human wellbeing.

Requirements

We are looking for a motivated student, preferably with an interest in learning and using molecular ecology methods but not required. The topic will depend on ongoing research programs and your specific interests. It could range from studying biogeochemical cycling, to how environmental change impacts organisms and ecosystems, to understanding disease prevention ecosystem services of seagrass meadows.

Contact

To apply, inquire about available projects or if you have any other questions, contact Jeroen van de Water (jeroen.van.de.water@nioz.nl).  

Reference

Lamb JB, van de Water JAJM, Bourne DG, Altier C, Hein MY, Fiorenza EA, Abu N, Jompa J, Harvell CD. Seagrass ecosystems reduce exposure to bacterial pathogens of humans, fishes, and invertebrates. Science. 2017 February; 355(6326): 731-733