Marine Ecology and Biodiversity

By better understanding fundamental ecological processes, their natural variability across time and space and links within the ecosystem, we increase our ability to predict and mitigate the consequences of human impact, helping to maintain healthy and biologically productive marine ecosystems.

The Marine Ecology and Biodiversity group is at the forefront of work on the assessment of biological and ecosystem responses to climate change, ocean acidification and Blue Carbon as well as pioneering research on the prevalence and impacts of microplastics and artificial light at night.

​The group employs field investigations, laboratory experiments and analyses of large biological and numerical modeling datasets to determine the causes and consequences of ecological change, the mechanisms driving ecological interactions and to address specific hypotheses regarding the impacts of climatic and anthropogenic stressors.Our activities encompass timescales from the short term (minutes, hours, weeks) to multi-decadal observations, and scales of organization from molecules through microbes, phytoplankton, zooplankton, benthic meiofauna, macrofauna to megafauna.

We use this knowledge to further help the development of state-of-the-art, process-based models of the marine environment, its species and habitats, as well as to support a better understanding of the goods and services it provides. Our scientists and data from the Western Channel Observatory (WCO) have been central in developing indicators and reporting targets for marine policy in the UK and the EU (e.g. UK Marine Strategy, MSFD, OSPAR) and at pan-Atlantic scales (e.g. ICES).

Our research seeks to:

• Understand and quantify the ecological connections among organisms and between organisms and their environment, identifying what drives changes in these interactions and the consequences, in order to to facilitate novel management strategies and enhance blue growth
• Explore the range of temporal and spatial variability across scales of biological organisation, using and developing analytical approaches and applying them to spatial and temporal data to quantify how species and systems vary.
• Identify the impacts of climatic change and human activity on organisms and ecosystems. This includes the direct and indirect effects of climate change (e.g. warming, stratification, extreme weather, ocean acidification, deoxygenation) and stressors from human activity including disturbance, contaminants, noise, and light.
• Understand and investigate the specific drivers of change in the polar regions that lead to sensitivity and/or resilience of polar animal and plant life, increasing our ability to predict ecosystem shifts in both the polar regions and at lower latitudes
• Determine what nature-based solutions limit and mitigate the impacts of climate change and pollution impacts in the marine environment, conducting research into ecologically inspired solutions.

Our vision for the next 5 years is to:

• Cement PML as a leader in Marine Ecology and Biodiversity Research; fully exploiting our world class facilities, existing and new data sets and highly skilled staff.
• Focus key areas of scientific excellence in multiple stressors, emerging contaminants and climate change impacts.
• Increase our understanding of variability in biodiversity, community structure and ecological processes at different scales, including the biotic and abiotic links within marine ecosystems.
• Apply our knowledge to better identify, predict and mitigate the consequences of human impacts and climatic change and to protect biodiversity, thereby underpinning the maintenance of healthy, diverse, resilient and productive marine ecosystems.

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