Based on: Mourato, C. V., Padrão, N., Serrão, E. A., & Paulo, D. (2023). Less Is More: Seagrass Restoration Success Using Less Vegetation per Area. Sustainability, 15(17), 12937. Efforts to restore seagrass meadows have been increasing, however strong currents and frequent storms often disturb newly transplanted seagrasses, making restoration efforts difficult and costly. But researchers...
The Phytophthora Research Centre team based at Mendel University in Brno has a long history of uncovering Oomycete diversity on terrestrial forest ecosystems all over the world… and now, within the RestoreSeas project, we are taking this challenge to another environment: hunting Oomycetes in marine forests! Understanding the impact of these pathogens in marine ecosystems is of crucial importance...
Based on: Tavares, A.I., Assis, J., Larkin, P.D., Creed, J.C., Magalhães, K., Horta, P., Engelen, A., Cardoso, N., Barbosa, C., Pontes, S. and Regalla, A., 2023. Long range gene flow beyond predictions from oceanographic transport in a tropical marine foundation species. Scientific Reports, 13(1), p.9112. Habitat-forming marine species, like seagrasses, corals and macroalgae have wide...
All organisms leave a trace of DNA in the environment that they inhabit, including those living in the ocean. We call this type of DNA, environmental DNA (eDNA). Example sources of eDNA include, but are not limited to, faeces, mucus, gametes, shed skin and dead cells. We can sample this DNA and analyse it to figure out who was there! In our case, we will use eDNA to study the biodiversity in...
In a short research project, Kaïn van Calcar, a BSc student at the University of Amsterdam, investigated the role of oomycetes in the decline of seagrass meadows. Seagrass meadows are essential for providing various ecosystem services, including acting as habitats for marine organisms and effectively storing carbon. Unfortunately, these meadows have been experiencing a rapid worldwide decline....
What are marine forests? Marine forests are biodiverse-rich ecosystems engineered by key structural taxa of macroalgae, seagrass and corals. Depending on the keystone taxa, we can separate them in three main ecosystems: seaweed banks, seagrass meadows and coral reefs. Seagrass meadows Seagrasses are marine flowering plants rooted to the seafloor. They can grow over large areas, creating...