Marine Eco-Systems Biology

Roscoff (Brittany), France, June 22-26, 2015

 

Deadline for application: April 7, 2015

 

Chairperson: Catherine BOYEN

Station Biologique CNRS INS 1650, Place Georges Teissier, CS 90074, 29688 Roscoff Cedex, France
Phone: +33 (0) 2 98 29 23 31 – Fax: +33 (0) 2 98 29 23 68  
Email: boyen@sb-roscoff.fr

 

Vice-chairperson: Jed FUHRMAN

Department of Biological Sciences; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA  90089-0371, USA
Phone: +1 (213) 740 5757 – Fax: +1 (213) 740 8123

Email : fuhrman@usc.edu

 

Eco-systems biology is a new discipline being promoted by breakthroughs both in biology and ecology. On the one hand biology is moving beyond the reductionist breakdown of cellular functions towards the consideration of an organism as an ecosystem from a holistic point of view. On the other, ecology is now embracing new high-throughput bioimaging and DNA sequencing technologies to understand causality in ecosystem function from a mechanistic perspective. Both biology and ecology are at a meeting point of systems analysis between space and time that address gene function and genotype-phenotype interactions, as well as community structure.

Marine environments are home to a rich source of ecosystems that are amenable to such approaches. In particular, their planktonic ecosystems collectively represent 95% of the marine biosphere and have been of central importance for Earth system functioning and evolution throughout the history of life. Other marine systems, such as coral reefs or mangroves, are at the heart of some of the richest and most productive ecosystems and yet are driven by the co-evolution of just a few keystone holobionts. Macroalgae-hosted ecosystems, primitive metazoans uniquely present in marine environments, and deep-sea communities represent additional examples of systems of special interest that are tractable to multiscale systems-level analysis.

Because of these assets of marine systems, a new generation of scientists is working to describe a range of ecosystems within a transdisciplinary framework, empowered by parallel methodological advances in oceanography, marine sampling and environmental monitoring, automated bioimaging and DNA sequencing, -omics, remote sensing, bioinformatics and mathematical modelling. The work is revealing a tremendous ecological diversity of genes, genomes, and organisms that will ultimately permit the understanding of organism function within the context of their biotic and abiotic interactions across kingdoms. This will provide the foundations for understanding marine eco-systems and eco-evolutionary responses to environmental change.

This conference will attempt to draw from the current enthusiasm in the field of marine eco-systems biology by interfacing the principal actors in the field. Such a conference is highly timely and should attract interest from a wide community, and will have the additional objective of inspiring a new generation of young integrative biologists.

 

Invited speakers
(provisional titles)

 

ARMBRUST Virginia (Seattle, USA)
Key note lecture: title to be coming

BOYEN Catherine (Roscoff, France)
The association of marine bacteria with the brown alga Ectocarpus:  a stress-resistant holobiont

BOWLER Chris (Paris, France)
Genomics-based exploration of the secrets of marine diatom communities

CARBONE Allessandra (Paris, France)
Towards a large scale mapping of metabolic preferences in genomes and metagenomes: a perspective

CERMENO Pedro (Barcelona, Spain)
Continental erosion, marine diatoms and the geological carbon cycle

CORDERRO Otto (Zürich, Switzerland)
Microscale ecological interactions on marine particles

De VARGAS Colomban (Roscoff, France)
Cracking marine plankton systems biocomplexity with high-throughput sequencing and imaging.

DUFOUR Sylvie (Paris, France)
Neuroendocrine systems in marine organisms: origin, evolution and role in biological cycle plasticity

DUPONT Samuel (Kristineberg, Sweden)
How can we predict impacts of global environmental changes on marine ecosystems

EVEILLARD Damien (Nantes, France)
Constraint-based approaches for systems ecology: from integrating heterogeneous omics knowledge to dynamical modeling.

FALCIATORE Angela (Paris, France)
Light sensing mechanisms in marine diatoms: anticipating and responding to environmental changes

FERRIER-PAGES Christine (Monaco)
Nutritional interactions between corals and their dinoflagellate symbionts

FRAUNE Sebastian (Kiel, Germany)
Host mechanisms controlling bacterial colonizers in the basal metazoan Hydra

FOLLOWS Mike (Cambridge, USA)
Exploring the organization of diverse plankton populations in a virtual ocean

FURHMAN Jed (Los-Angeles, USA)
Bacteria, Archaeal, and Protistan association networks reveal many levels of connectivity in marine plankton

IRIGOIEN Xabier (Thuwal, Saudi Arabia)
Transcriptomics of neustonic zooplankton during a Trichodesmium bloom

KNOLL Andrew K. (Cambridge, USA)
Marine Ecosystems: A Perspective from Deep Time

MULLINEAUX Lauren (Woodshole, USA)
Community dynamics at deep-sea hydrothermal vents: scaling up from larval dispersal to regional biodiversity

PIGANEAU Gwenaël (Banyuls, France)
Evolutionary Dynamics of Community Interactions

POHNERT Georg (Jena, Germany)
Metabolomics enabled search for chemical signals in marine plankton

TESSMAR Kristin (Vienna, Australia)
Sea, sun and moon: Marine models for the study of endogenous timers

TORSTEN Thomas (Sydney, Australia)
Microbial diversity, functions and interactions in the sponge holobiont

WEINBAUER Markus (Villefranche, France)
Viral and microbial ecology of the dark ocean: From genes to ecosystem functions 

WEINBERGER Florian (Kiel, Germany)
Eco-systems biology of a marine invader: Stress trait selection in Gracilaria vermiculophylla

WEIS Virginia (Corvallis, USA)
The regulation of coral-algae mutualisms: In sickness and in health

WORDEN Alexandra (Monterey, USA)
Phytoplankton sensing and sensitivity

 

Deadline for application: April 7, 2015

 

Registration fee (including board and lodging)

450 € for PhD students
650 € for other participants

 

Application for registration
The total number of participants is limited to 115 and all participants are expected to attend for the whole duration of the conference. Selection is made on the basis of the affinity of potential participants with the topics of the conference. Scientists and PhD Students interested in the meeting should send:

- their curriculum vitae
- the list of their main publications for the 3 last years
- the abstract of their presentation

to the Chairperson of the conference (boyen@sb-roscoff.fr) before the deadline. After it, the organizers will select the participants. Except in some particular cases approved by the Chairperson, it is recommended that all selected participants present their work during the conference, either in poster form or by a brief in- session talk. The organizers choose the form in which the presentations are made. No payment will be sent with application. Information on how and when to pay will be mailed in due time to those selected.