| Project Detail |
Tropical reef-building corals live in a dynamic environment with fluctuating exposure to solar light and seawater flow. It has long been assumed that corals interact passively with the surrounding seawater via a so-called diffusive boundary layer (DBL), which is a thin (~0.1-1 mm) layer of water located at the immediate surface of the coral, wherein molecular diffusion is the dominant transport mechanism for gases and solutes. The DBL can thus be an important regulating mechanism for coral metabolism. However, the recent discovery that some corals possess the ability to enhance mass transport across and within the DBL via the generation of vortices caused by the beating of epidermal cilia indicates a more complex and active control of mass transfer, albeit the importance for coral ecophysiology and stress responses remains unexplored. In this project, I will: i) develop and apply novel imaging approaches (using optical sensor nanoparticles for oxygen and pH in combination with a particle imaging velocimetry system) for studying flow and mass transfer at the coral-seawater interface; and ii) use the novel imaging techniques together with other microenvironmental sensing approaches (microsensors and optical coherence tomography) to study how ciliary beating affects coral ecophysiology. This will generate novel insights to fundamental questions of how corals exchange solutes with the surrounding seawater, how these basic processes are affected by environmental perturbations (of e.g. temperature, oxygen level and pH), and the relationship between these external processes and the internal structural heterogeneities of the coral tissue. The project will be conducted at the Marine Biology Section of the University of Copenhagen, where all experiments will take place under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Michael Kühl and complemented by a secondment at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (Germany) and a short visit to the Graz University of Technology (Austria). |
