Research Interests

Globally, my research aims to understand if and how an opportunist species can adapt to environmental and feeding changes, in a context of climate change. It consists of investigating the trophic plasticity of a sea urchin, Sterechinus neumayeri, as well as its gut microbiome variability, in contrasted habitats and environments of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). To access the trophic plasticity and the microbiome compositional and functional variability, a combination of stable isotopes, metabarcoding and metagenomic analyses will be performed on S. neumayeri food pellets. Samples of this sea urchin will be collected during two Antarctic expeditions, in Southern WAP (TANGO1, 2023) and in the Northern WAP (TANGO2, 2024).

Thesis: “Trophic plasticity and gut microbiome variability under climate change context: a case study of Southern Ocean benthic species.”

Supervisor:  Bruno Danis    Co-supervisor: Isabelle George