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Deciphering the biodiversity, ecology and evolution of magnetotactic symbiosis – SymbioMAGNET
Symbiosis and mutualism are drivers of life diversification and sources of biological innovation in the microbial world. Recently, magnetotactic assemblies composed of a flagellated protist and ectosymbiotic bacteria biomineralizing magnetic crystals have been discovered. Their mutualistic symbiosis
Plant Hydraulic Functioning in face of Climate Change – PHYDRAUCC
Atmospheric CO2 concentration ([CO2]) has increased by 45% since 1750, the highest in the past 800 000 years. [CO2] will continue to increase as precipitation and soil moisture are modified alongside. Forest trees will hence be challenged by higher [CO2], warmer temperatures, and more frequent and/o
Combining artificial intelligence and environmental DNA to predict marine fish range shifts under global change – SHIFTeDNA
Atmospheric and oceanic warming is currently accelerating at an unprecedented rate, with consequences for biodiversity as the modification of species geographic distribution, hereafter range shift. Fish, as marine ectotherms, are particularly sensitive to these temperature changes. These modificatio
Exploring the Extent, Routes and Fate of Horizontal Transfers In Plant Nuclear Genomes – EXOTICA
Horizontal Transfers (HTs) refers to the movement of genetic material between distantly related species by mechanisms other than sexual reproduction. In prokaryotes, HTs are well known to be a source of new adaptive traits such as the spreading of genes implicated in antibiotic resistance. Over the
Ephemeral swimmers of marine parasites – EPHEMER
Survival of widespread marine planktonic parasites strictly depends on the capability of zoospores, their short-lived flagellated unicellular form, to find and infect their specific host among a complex microbial community in a quite short time (few hours to few days). Considering that almost nothin
Cruising the marine halomethane cycle: Microbiology, biochemistry and geochemistry of reference bacteria, new microbial players and underlying processes – MAHABIO
Volatile organohalides are toxic to living organisms. Furthermore, they contribute to the destruction of stratospheric ozone. Seas and oceans are major sources of these compounds, which prominently include halomethanes, produced in significant amounts by microorganisms and algae. Conversely, halomet
Genome Evolution of Decapods – GEODE
Decapods are a very diverse order of crustaceans, comprising over 15,000 living species including crayfish, lobsters, crabs and shrimps. Among the decapods, freshwater crayfish are key species of aquatic ecosystems, with a strong impact on the biodiversity of their habitat. Despite their ecological
Impact of the seismo-volcanic crisis on Mayotte’s unique thalassohaline crater lake, the Dziani Dzaha – SUBSILAKE
Since 2018, the underwater rise of a volcano 50 km east of the Mayotte archipelago has caused numerous earthquakes and increased the islands subsidence rate. The Dziani Dzaha, a thalassohaline volcanic crater lake is located on Petite-Terre, the second largest island of the archipelago. This lake ha
Phytoplankton-virus interactions: from ‘multi-omic’ determinants of antiviral resistance to ecological and evolutionary dynamics – PHYTOMICS
Half the Earth’s photosynthetic activity is mediated by oceanic phytoplankton that is regulated by a large diversity of viruses. Among them, large algae-infecting double-stranded DNA viruses, or phycoDNAviruses, are ubiquitous and key regulators of Mamiellophyceae, i.e. unicellular eukaryotes consti
Diversity and role of the pathobiome in infection by an invasive parasitIic protist in clam populations – PANIC
Recent studies have shown an impressive increase in the circulation of infectious agents with the emergence of numerous epizootics, zoonoses and epidemics that may result from the introduction of exotic species combined with climate change. The marine micro-parasite Perkinsus olseni (Alveolata) illu
PArental Care Strategies (PACS) of arctic shorebirds: consequences of the interplay between abiotic conditions and predator-prey interactions on breeding success – PACS
There is ample evidence that climate changes (CC) are among the most influential drivers of biodiversity, and predicting the consequences of CC on species and their ecosystems is a major challenge for ecologists. Most studies have concentrated on the effects of CC of phenology and physiology on orga
Studying mealworm life history evolution to optimize its industrial production – OPTIM-INSECT
The mealworm beetle Tenebrio molitor is a promising alternative protein source for nutrition. Optimizing its mass production at an industrial scale requires a better knowledge of the evolution of the major life history traits of T. molitor and their trade-offs. Growth rate is critical as its variati
Adaptive diversification of Fly Orchids as a new model to investigate ecological speciation and evolutionary radiations – DiversiFly
Developing an integrative research allowing to elucidate both the links between genotype, phenotype and fitness and the genomic bases of the variation form a major challenge in our understanding of speciation and the emergence of biodiversity. In DiversiFly, I propose to implement such approach by g
Growth of Arctic diatoms at extreme low light and impact on populations dynamics – Dim
In the Arctic Ocean, microalgae experience extreme seasonal variations in available light, from the polar night under the ice pack to the midnight sun in ice-free waters. We have recently discovered that they could grow under the extreme low-light regime typical of the polar night exit. The objectiv
DIVING INTO THE CHEMICAL WORLD OF CETACEANS – DICWOC
Although chemical signals are crucial for a diversity of biological functions and have been extensively studied in terrestrial mammals, olfactory and gustatory abilities have been poorly investigated in cetaceans. Our project aims to give an exhaustive insight into the chemical communication and to
Phylogenetic, Ecological and Physiological characterisation of the pan-Arctic algal genome – PanArctica
The Arctic Ocean is set apart from all other oceans due to being encircled by land, its extreme environment, and its distinct ecosystem, characterised by strong seasonal succession. Anthropogenic climate change is rapidly changing the Arctic Ocean into a warmer, fresher habitat, and understanding th
Transposable elements driven adaptation to temperate environments in the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus – MosquiTEs
Understanding how species and populations adapt to new environmental conditions is one of the goal of evolutionary biology and has never been more important in the current context of both climate change that challenges every single species and globalization and the intensification of international t
Communities dynamics around Fe-oxidizing bacteria in Iron-rich microbial mats: Adjustment to environmental variations – IRONWOMAN
The IRONWOMAN project aim to validate the hypothesis of the primordial role of marine iron-oxidizing bacteria (FeOB) in promoting the development of iron-rich mats, and impacting the iron biogeochemical cycle and the primary production in the deep oceans, according to the variations of the environme
Floral Evolution: what is the impact of human-induced Pollinator Decline? – EvoPoD
While the ecological consequences of the ongoing pollinator crisis have recenty received considerable attention, the evolutionary implications of this situation remain poorly appreciated and are more challenging to predict. Focusing on a plant species with separate sexes, the EvoPoD project aims at
Effect of Past Environmental Changes on Species and Traits Diversification – CHANGE
CHANGE aims to improve our understanding of how past environmental changes have influenced the tempo of species and phenotypic diversification. Phylogenetic models currently used to test the association between environmental factors and macroevolutionary rates have major limitations, such as testing
AVIAN GLYCATION RESISTANCE: PHYLOGENETIC AND ECOLOGICAL ROOTS, MECHANISMS AND INDIVIDUAL FITNESS LINKS. – AGEs
Exploring biodiversity generally brings unexpected observations. One of them is that evolution has led to a large diversity of animal longevities with paradoxical physiological responses to environmental constraints. Birds’ glycemia is diabetic-like and it does not match with their long healthy life
Multiscale analysis of past and future temporal variability of marine population connectivity – PopNCo
The increasing threats on marine biodiversity and resources related to human activities and induced climate change emphasize the urgent need to assess the long-term effectiveness of current management actions in order to anticipate necessary updates. In PopNCo, we question the robustness of a key es
Impact of the platyhelminthe Obama nungara invasion on earthworm communities in France – PLATWORM
The increase of international trade in recent decades, as well as insufficient control for the transport of exotic species, have resulted in the accidental introduction of many animal and plant species. One of the most significant ecological impacts of introduced species is predation on native speci
Diet-induced tooth plasticity and implications for the inference of trophic interactions of vertebrates around the Permo-Triassic boundary – PLASTICiTEETH
Multicellular life was almost wiped out at the Permo-Triassic boundary (PTB), about 250 Myr ago. At the time, large volcanic degassing from the Siberian Trapps released huge amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and initiated a series of spectacular fluctuations of the climate and chemistry of the oceans
Plant-mediated selection of endosymbiotic bacteria – SELECT
Eukaryotic organisms are exposed to complex microbial communities that affect their health, development and evolution. They have evolved multiple layers of control mechanisms to defend themselves from pathogens while, at the same time, allowing colonization by beneficial microbes. The filtering of m
By provoking a shift from globally reducing to oxidizing conditions on Earth’s surface, the great oxidation event (GOE) had a profound impact on the bioenergetics of ancestral microorganisms. Curiously, in spite of their crucial role in bioenergetics processes, the nearly-universal quinone molecules
All is fair in love and war: adaptive chemical diversity, and its role in mimicry and ecological speciation – SEXBOMB
Our understanding of how biodiversity comes about is surprisingly limited. Studies of ecological adaptation and speciation can be useful but have focused almost exclusively on conspicuous visual or auditory signals, and replicated studies across species and adaptive traits are needed to understand t
Prey-mediAted environmental effects on marine Predators: EXplaining ecological responses from individual to population scales – APEX
APEX will assess and unravel the mechanisms underlying climate and abiotic environmental effects on population dynamics in a marine top-predator. Here, I propose to develop a holistic approach integrating prey population dynamics within the study of environment-predator relationships in one of the
Diversity, lifestyle and evolution of the phylum Dependentiae in their associated protist hosts – DEPEND
Most bacterial taxa are yet-to-be cultivated, thus forming the ‘Microbial Dark Matter’ (MDM), a consortium whose ecology and biology remain largely unexplored. The Dependentiae are a major MDM phylum, found worldwide in various environments. Genomic evidence suggests an ancestral and unusual adaptat
Evolution of resistance to natural gene drive systems – RESIST
Genomes can generally be viewed as cohesive units, in which most genes cooperate to increase organismal fitness, by making positive contributions to survival and reproduction of organisms. This cooperation largely arises because most genes are fairly transmitted from one generation to the next (e.g.
Plant traits and aquatic ecosystem functioning under climate change – PONDS
Climate change strongly affects wetlands and their plant communities. It leads to temperature increase which may modify, directly or indirectly through the alteration of biotic interactions, the plant species performances. Project PONDS aims at determining how annual temperature increase modifies th
Microbial competition in mutualistic interactions with ticks – MICROM
Microbial life has a pervasive influence on macro-organisms. Many microbes are essential for their development, immunity and nutrition. These mutualistic interactions have facilitated the adaptation of major eukaryotic lineages to specialized niches, altering ecosystems and biodiversity. Indeed, art
TRaIt-Based MoDEls To Predict MariNe EcosysTem Dynamics – TRIDENT
TRIDENT aims at developing an original trait-based modelling framework to project the effects of global anthropogenic changes on marine biodiversity and seafloor ecosystem dynamics. Model development will be stepwise: (1) we will first infer the topology of community interactions, as well as set of
Temporal dynamics, evolution and mechanisms of transgenerational plasticity in a prey-predator context – TEATIME
Global change poses adaptive challenges to organisms, which have to face various forms of stress: habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive species pollutant or yet climate change. The main characteristic of environmental changes caused by human activities is that they occur faster and larger than th