Marine Biology Lab

BIOMAR Lab hosting dBASO workshop

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Bruno Danis

This week, we will be hosting an international workshop to scope out the new dynamic Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean (dBASO), a followup project of SCAR’s Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean.

At the end of five years of extensive biodiversity exploration and assessment by CAML and the OBIS Antarctic Node (the SCAR Marine Biodiversity Information Network), a new initiative, the multi-authored “SCAR Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean”, has been established under the aegis of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) to provide an up-to-date synthesis of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic biogeographic knowledge and to make available a new comprehensive online resource for visualisation, analysis and modelling of species distribution. It will constitute a major scientific output of CAML and SCAR-MarBIN as well as being a significant legacy of CoML and the International Polar Year to fulfill the needs of biogeographic information for science, conservation, monitoring and sustainable management of the changing Southern Ocean. It will be of direct benefit to the Antarctic Treaty and associated bodies such as the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

Ten participants from 5 countries (Australia, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Belgium) will be working on the initial development steps to make dBASO go live.

PostDoc opportunity!

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Bruno Danis

vERSO PostDoc

The deadline is now passed, we will not be accepting more candidates!

Background

Based at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), the BIOMAR marine biology lab carries out its research on the bioecology of marine benthic invertebrates, with a special focus on echinoderms.

Our lab will be coordinating the new vERSO research project which aims to assess the impact of the main stressors driven by global change on benthic Antarctic ecosystems using representative taxa from different size classes of the benthos.

We will assess the simultaneous effects of temperature, acidification, sedimentation and food quality and quantity on nutrient fluxes and metabolism of sediment communities, providing insights in both sensitivity and resilience of these ecosystems. It is intended to integrate these aspects to develop dynamic species distribution models (SDMs), under non-equilibrium conditions. These models can help reveal tipping points leading to irreversible changes in ecosystems functioning.

We are looking for a postdoctoral scientist, for a period of 2 years

Topic

Global change affects Antarctic communities through numerous interacting stressors, the most important ones being temperature increase, acidification, increase in sedimentation rate and change in nutrients and food supply linked to glacier melting, reduced seasonal ice cover and ice shelf collapses. For the Antarctic the impact of stressors such as temperature rise and acidification have so far mainly been considered at the individual or species level and, in most cases, only a single impact factor was studied and occasionally two. These studies provided evidence that numerous taxa as well as global diversity will be affected. However, no community-level studies addressed the combined effects of the aforementioned stressors on Antarctic benthos. Furthermore, it is obvious that stressors will act synergistically and that their combined effects should be determined.

Emphasis will be put on in situ experiments during polar expeditions, in two contrasting areas of the Southern Ocean. In parallel, dynamic SDMs will be developed to gain insights on the potential future distributions of models organisms under various Global Change scenarios.

Profile

PhD in Marine Biology
Spent over 24 months abroad (not in Belgium) during the last 3 years
Interest in polar ecosystems and biodiversity informatics
Ready to participate in long sampling campaigns at sea or station-based
Experience in project coordination and interest in modelling is an asset

Deadline

If you are interested, please send a brief CV, and a letter of motivation to the project coordinator (Dr Bruno Danis, bdanis@ulb.ac.be), no later than April 30th, 2014.

Internship at STRI

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Bruno Danis

During the last months of 2013, a PhD student of our lab (Quentin Jossart) went to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. This work was done in the laboratory of Dr Harilaos Lessios that has a deal of experience with sea-urchins genetics.

The work focused mainly on genetic analysis and especially on the characterization of microsatellite loci (highly polymorphic nuclear markers) for the burrowing sea-urchin Meoma ventricosa. In addition to genetics, several samplings were done in the central part (Portobello) and west part (Bocas del Toro, picture on the top) of the country in order to complete the genetic data set.

The main goal of this project is to evaluate the genetic structure of M. ventricosa inside the Caribbean Sea. Moreover, this structure could be compared to the pattern observed for a parasite of M. ventricosa. This comparison could help for revealing the factors that influence the dispersal in the Caribbean.

Meoma ventricosa (picture: doris.ffessm.fr)

Portman- ROV Sampling Gallery

Image

This gallery contains the pictures we extracted from the video transects that we operated in Portman (Spain, 2013). Each picture is a support for a Bay’ species cartography work.

Please Do not hesitate to contact me for any question/doubt about our identifications or to notice any specie you could identify on the pictures

From 17/10/2013 to the 24/10/2013 we captured some video transects of shallow benthic habitats encountered within or close to the bay of Portmàn (Murcia, Spain), which is subject to a strong pollution by metallic compounds due to an old mining activity. The following pictures, extracted from these video transects were used to fill species’ distribution files that sould be available for the whole scientific community through an online portail (Link). Thus this post aims to provide a visual support relative to this occurrence file, but is also open for suggestions about identifications that are not already tagged on the pictures and that would increase our data about species distribution. You might see some identifications relative to the class, family or genus. It is relative to individuals that we could not identify to the specie level ( we limit our identifications to the lowest taxonomic rank that we are undoubted about).

Anemonia viridis

Anemonia viridis – Echinoidea

Paracentrotus lividus – Echinoidea

Paracentrotus lividus

Echinoidea – Paracentrotus lividus – Padina povonica

Padina pavonica

Paracentrotus lividus – Echinoidea

Pinna nobilis

Posidonia oceanica

Echinaster sepositus

Ophidiaster ophidianus

Corallina sp – Echinoidea

Pinna nobilis – dictyota sp.

Echinoidea

Echinoidea

Echinoidea

Echinoidea

Paracentrotus lividus

Maxillopoda – Paracentrotus lividus

Asteroidea

Echinoidea

Anemonia viridis – Echinoidea

Echinoidea

Echinoidea

Echinoidea

Paracentrotus lividus

Codium bursa

Caulerpa racemosa – Echinaster sepositus

Spongia officilanis

Halimeda tuna – Echinaster sepositus

Arbacia lixula

Echinaster sepositus – Halimeda tuna – Padina pavonica

Paracentrotus lividus

Echinoidea

Paracentrotus lividus

Holothuria sanctori

Echinoidea

Corallinna sp. – Paracentrotus lividus

Eunicella sp.

Echinaster sepositus – Halimeda tuna – Padina pavonica

Paracentrotus lividus – Corallina sp.

Anemonia viridis

Echinoidea

Microbes, Diversity and Ecological Roles session at the SCAR OSC

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Bruno Danis

You can register now for the Microbes, Diversity and Ecological Roles session at the SCAR Open Science Conference , which will be held in Auckland, New Zealand from 23 rd August to 3rd September 2014

Most, if not all, Antarctic ecosystems are home to microbes that can span the range from sparse to dense and low to high diversity assemblages. These organisms o<en harbor specialized capabilities to withstand the environmental extremes that the high latitudes of the Antarctic pose. This session welcomes contribu/ons to our understanding and appreciation of Antarctic microbial systems, exploring diversity and ecological roles, contributions to biogeochemical cycles, and interactions between organisms (symbiotic, predatory or parasitic) and ultimately how microbes come together to influence Antarctic systems.

The increased recognition of microbes in all domains of life inhabiting Antarctic ecosystems – and in some cases not only surviving, but thriving in these systems (e.g. aquatic, icy, soil, rock, subglacial, marine benthic or pelagic) is gaining traction largely due to increased scientific exploration of diverse environments paralleled with technologic improvements in molecular sciences (e.g. next generation sequencing and bioinformatics analyses), application of geobiological tools, and remote sensing of both environments and organisms. This session has been developed by AntEco and the International Union of Biological Sciences.

The session is convened by:

Prof. Alison Murray, DRI, USA

Prof. Nils Chr. Stenseth, University of Oslo, Norway

Dr. Ian Hawes, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Abstract submission deadline: 14 February 2014

Download the flyer here: SCAR-OS_MicrobesSessionFlyer

Biomar Lab hosting mARS workshop

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Bruno Danis

This week, we will be hosting a hands-on workshop to push the mARS project further, with Alison Murray (Desert Research Institute), Anton Van de Putte and Nabil Youdjou (biodiversity.aq project)

The Microbial Antarctic Resources System (mARS) is envisioned as an information system dedicated to facilitate the discovery, access and analysis of geo-referenced, molecular microbial diversity (meta)data generated by Antarctic researchers, in an Open fashion. The scope of diversity will encompass all freel-living and host-associated virus, Bacteria, Archaea, and singled-celled Eukarya.

mARS focuses on past, present and future works. It offers a community-driven platform for scientists to publish, document, analyse and share their (meta)data with the broad community for science, conservation and management purposes, in the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty.

mARS is composed of interoperable modules, iteratively building the microbial component of the biodiversity.aq network.
To the best extent possible, the wishes of the community regarding mARS functionalities will be reflected in the flexibility and scalability of the system. Feedback is expected from the users community in order to align their needs and the functionalities of mARS.

This week, we will try to get through Step 3 of the mARS system and prepare for Step 4 once we have enough data in mARS to make it worthwhile.

mARS steps include:

1. Data description and discovery

2: Habitat and Microbial Sequence Metadata Entry (MiMARKS Data Standard; Microbial_Sequence_Set_Template)

3: Georeferenced-molecular sequence database integration

4: Processing batch sequence data –Circum-Antarctic microbial diversity

You can find more on the mARS white paper page.

Mission Portman: a short report…

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Bruno Danis

Poster explaining the ongoing remediation programs in the Bay Portman

A small team from the BIOMAR Lab set a research mission to the Bay of Portman, Spain. The team was composed of Philippe Pernet (technician), three master students (Valérie Rossez, Andrea Garvetto and Maxime Coupremanne) under the supervision of Bruno Danis. The team reached the Bay on October 16th, 2013 for a 10-day stay.

The Bay of Portman was chosen for its exceptional environmental characteristics, from a contamination standpoint. A conference was recently held on the subject, involving our colleagues Drs Maria Jose Martinez and Carmen Perez, both from the Research Group of Soil Pollution in the University of Murcia.

A series of sampling and measurement were carried out in the framework of the master students respective projects:

Valérie Rossez worked on comparative acid-base physiology in two species of sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus and Arbacia lixula), investigating the relationship between this physiological parameters and the uptake of contaminants but the sea urchins

Paracentrotus lividus (image from Encyclopedia of life, www.eol.org)

Arbacia lixula (picture from Encyclopedia of Life, www.eol.org)

Andrea Garvetto worked on microbial diversity, and took samples to investigate the link between the levels of contamination and microbial community structure in digestive pellets of two species of sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus and Arbacia lixula), in various algae as well as in the seawater and sediments (various granulometries).

Maxime Coupremanne carried out a fine-scale mapping of the biodiversity and habitats of the Bay and its surroundings using underwater video transects using the lab’s ROV as well as videos shot by SCUBA divers.

Our ROV, Wally, in station S3, ready for deployment

Also, samples were taken for heavy metal levels analyses for each corresponding stations. The team was able to work in a total of 16 stations in the Bay, organised in a set of transects (from inside to outside the Bay as well as along the coast, following the main currents), and has come back to the Lab to process the samples. This pool of samples and video transects constitutes a unique benchmark to address potential future changes, for example in the mining activities of the Bay of Portman.

Sampling station in the Bay of Portman

On our way to Portman

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Bruno Danis

Tomorrow, we’re leaving for Portman, Spain for a sampling mission. We’ll be collecting samples for microbiology, ecotoxicology and habitat mapping. We’ll be using scuba diving and the Lab’s micro-ROV for this purpose. We hope to be able to screen the bay’s contamination status, and determine the impact on selected representatives from its ecosystems at various levels of biological organization. We’ll post more as we go! Special thanks to Guy and Fabienne, for allowing us to tryout the ROV in their swimming pool 🙂

Here’s a map of Portman:

The Bay is located close to Carthagena, in the south east Spain, and displays residual metal contamination caused by the dumping of mine tailings into the bay during the 20th century. High levels of concentrations of Hg, Cd, Pb, Cu, Zn, and As have been measured in different biotic and abiotic compartments of the bay.

New Website lifting off…

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Bruno Danis

We’re excited to announce that we’ve been working on a new website for our Laboratory. The new website can be found on both the ULB (biomar.ulb.ac.be) and general (www.marinebiology.be) addresses. It uses a CMS (WordPress) which allows us to progressively deploy a dynamic, modular and interoperable website. We will progressively be plugging in content (information, news, publications, but also raw data, model outputs and maps) and implementing more modules. Stay tuned, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for collaborations, networking or with suggestions.

Available only through your browser…

OpenROV étape 6: assemblage du boitier étanche

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Bruno Danis

Cette partie de l’assemblage se fait également sans difficulté particulière. Elle consiste à coller entre eux des disques concentriques de diamètres différents, ce qui permettra d’intercaler des o-ring qui assureront l’étanchéité. Les orifices latéraux servent d’un part de passe-cable (et seront étanchéifiés à l’aide d’une pâte époxy) et d’autre part d’évent, pour éviter une surpression à l’intérieur du cylindre.

Vue générale du boitier d’étanchéité. Photo: Bruno Danis

Les deux bouchons du boitier, formés de cercles de différents diamètres. Photo: Bruno Danis

Montage à blanc, tout s’ajuste parfaitement. Photo: Bruno Danis

Le boitier d’étanchéité, la webcam est placée. Photo: Bruno Danis

OpenROV by OpenROV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.