Marine Chemical Ecology
Marine Chemical Ecology aims to increase our understanding of chemically mediated interactions in marine communities, to determine bottom-up effects on communities and ecosystems.
Chemical interactions
Signalling compounds shape large-scale marine processes including biogeochemical cycles, community composition and food web dynamics which are fundamental to understanding marine ecosystems. On a more local scale, chemical signals mediate some of the most critical interactions in marine communities including: mate-finding, detection of prey and avoidance of predators.
Research area
MARICE is an interdisciplinary research group that combines expertise in ecology, chemistry, evolution, microbiology, genetics, and hydrodynamics. We use experimental ecology approaches and combine these with state-of-the-art analytics such as the isolation and characterisation of metabolites and exploration of signal propagation in our hydromechanical laboratory.
Research topics
Our research projects include topics from host-pathogen interactions in the marine benthos to the screening of marine organisms for bioactive metabolites possessing new and unique properties (bioprospecting).