Objective The goal of this project is to use the animal communities inhabiting anchialine environments as a model to investigate evolutionary patterns and processes in island-like marine habitats. Anchialine environments represent world-wide distributed land-locked water bodies with marine origin. They are comparable to islands for terrestrial habitats as they encompass young, discrete habitats with comparable ecological conditions to the sea, thus providing independent replicates of comparable evolutionary processes. All anchialine habitats previously investigated harbor high endemism, disharmonic communities, species with unique set of troglomorphic features, and old animal lineages interpreted as living fossils. In the four research parts of this project, we will test each of these observations and the processes related to them by analyzing large data sets with both macroecological and phylogenetic methods and a broad theoretical perspective from the field of evolutionary ecology, comparative evolution and island biogeography. This will facilitate to link the ecological and evolutionary processes observed in these habitats (easy to isolate and test due to the discrete and young nature of anchialine habitats) with those affecting oceanic ecosystems, providing a tool for a deeper understanding of the marine biota. Whereas similar approaches are well characterized in terrestrial environments (e.g. island), they are missing in the ocean, obscuring our understanding of the processes occurring there. Fields of science natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological morphologycomparative morphologynatural sciencesbiological sciencesevolutionary biologynatural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyevolutionary ecologynatural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystemsnatural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyinvertebrate zoology Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2016 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2016 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF Coordinator CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE Net EU contribution € 168 277,20 Address PIAZZALE ALDO MORO 7 00185 Roma Italy See on map Region Centro (IT) Lazio Roma Activity type Research Organisations Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 168 277,20
