Project description
Reconstructing ocean highways of the past
Understanding how ocean populations are connected is crucial to preserve diversity, but our simulations lack this. They simulate how larvae disperse in today’s oceans, but fail to incorporate how oceanic currents in the past shaped patterns of genes over time. This failure limits our insight into population structure and how it evolved. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SPACETIME project will reconstruct larval connectivity between coral reef systems for the past 26 000 years. SPACETIME will model past ocean conditions with coupled oceanographic and biophysical models, and integrate the results into genetic and ecological models. The project will enhance our understanding of reef population processes and technology for guiding biodiversity conservation in a time of climate change.
Objective
Population structure in marine ecosystems is set by historical gene flow, often driven by larval dispersal through ocean currents. While state-of-the-art larval dispersal models contribute to our understanding of contemporary gene flow and population dynamics, they are limited by their failure to incorporate past connectivity, reducing our ability to understand population structure and assess models against palaeoecological data.
The interdisciplinary SPACETIME project will address these major knowledge gaps by (i) quantifying palaeoconnectivity among all major coral reef systems since the Last Glacial Maximum, and (ii) advancing predictive ecological and genetic models for coral reef taxa by incorporating palaeoconnectivity and assessing model performance against the geological archive. SPACETIME will achieve these objectives through an ensemble of coupled hydrodynamic and biophysical simulations under past environmental conditions over the past 26,000 years, hindcasting the effects of changing climate and bathymetry on the physical oceanographic environment at a scale relevant to larval dispersal. The resulting palaeoconnectivity data will then be integrated into dynamical metacommunity and genetic models, which will be used to investigate the role of palaeoconnectivity in deglacial reef dynamics and population structure.
Through these diverse simulations, and a comprehensive assessment against past and present genetic, ecological & oceanographic data, SPACETIME will generate valuable connectivity data for ecologists and evolutionary biologists to aid hypothesis generation and testing. The project directly supports impacts 21, 27 & 28 of the Horizon Europe 2025-2027 Key Strategic Orientation by improving models guiding biodiversity conservation activities. Finally, the training programme will train me in population genetics, model-data integration, and project management & supervision, supporting my development as a leader in interdisciplinary marine science.
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Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
27570 Bremerhaven
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.