Responsibilities

• Supervision of Ph.D. students
• Member of coordination committee
• AWI contribution to PASARELAS (FP6-INCO-DEV-1-SSA)

Research Interest

• Invertebrate reproduction and development
• Climate dependent evolution
• Marine ecophysiology
• Ecology of upwelling areas

Abstract

• Studies of coastal ecosystems in the Humboldt Current system off South America traditionally have been rather descriptive. Data acquisition on macrobenthic communities and/or the pelagic regime over time revealed changes in e.g. abundance, biomass and biotic composition related to ENSO. However, the patterns underlying ecophysiological processes, which allow for explaining diversity and biogeographic shifts, changes in growth patterns and reproductive traits related to ENSO, remain principally undefined. One of the parameters usually indicating changing climate is decreasing or increasing temperature. Temperature changes can affect, directly or indirectly, marine populations during all life stages. We will study the influence of changing temperature, as indicator of decadal-scale climate variation, on life-history changes in both adult and larval stages of key species, including invaders during EN (such as shrimp, Xiphopenaeus riveti) as well as such species, which suffer from mass mortality due to increased water temperatures associated to EN (e.g., Mesodesma donacium, Aulacomya atra, Cancer spp. Platyxanthus orbignyi). Towards this goal, a profound synthesized knowledge of ecological and physiological processes is required which can only be gained by an interdisciplinary combination of ecological, physiological, genetic and modelling investigations.

Keywords

• ENSO, invertebrates, climate, upwelling, ecology, physiology, crustaceans