Plankton Ecology and Biogeochemistry Research Group - Blog

10th edition of the Ramon Margalef Colloquia

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:17:00 +0000

Title: “Impacts on Open Ocean Bentho-Pelagic Coupling Processes"

The colloquium will consist of presentations, discussion sessions and other group activities. Participants will be divided into groups, and each group will lead the day's discussion, with active participation of everyone. The leading group will also write a small report.

The colloquium will be an excellent opportunity to advance multidisciplinary discussions, foster future collaborations, and research networks.

Venue: Instituto de Ciencias del Mar (ICM) – CSIC, Barcelona (Spain)

Dates: 13-18 September 2026

Registration deadline April 15, 2026

Confirmed speakers:

· Morten Iversen (MARUM, Universität Bremen, Germany)

· Neus Campanyà-Llovet (University of Aveiro, Portugal)

· Jerome Pinti (Gulf of Maine Research Institute, USA)

· Airam Sarmiento-Lezcano (IEO- A Coruña (CSIC))

· Josep Maria (Pep) Gasol (Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Barcelona)

· Martí Galí (Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Barcelona)

· Fabio C. De Leo Ocean Networks, University of Victoria (Canada)

More information at: https://ramonmargalefcolloquia.com/

info@ramonmargalefcolloquia.com

Worshop on modeling marine resources

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 17:21:00 +0000

A Coruña, Thursday, November 20, 2025. The Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO-CSIC) organized a national forum for scientific collaboration and reflection in A Coruña to promote new tools aimed at improving the responsible and sustainable management of marine resources. The meeting focused on the potential of integrating the knowledge generated about the early life stages of fish —especially eggs and larvae— into fish stock assessment methods.

The workshop ‘From the individual to the stock: integration of results from IBM models and other early phase approaches in the assessment of fish stocks’, was held on November 11 and 12 at the Higher Technical School of Nautical Studies and Machines of A Coruña. It was organized by the research groups EPB (Plankton Ecology and Biogeochemistry) and MERVEX (Modeling and Evaluation of Exploited Resources) of the IEO-CSIC.

Over the course of two days, two invited lectures and 14 scientific contributions were presented, addressing recent advances in oceanographic modeling, larval dynamics, and integrated approaches for the assessment of exploited populations. Subsequently, several discussion sessions were held aimed at identifying innovative strategies to connect information derived from biophysical models of eggs and larvae with the methods used in fisheries assessments.

Among the main conclusions of the workshop, the potential of oceanographic models to improve the estimation of essential parameters in assessment models, such as natural mortality or the stock-recruitment relationship, as well as their usefulness in the standardization of abundance indices, was highlighted.

This activity is part of the work package "End-to-end models in fisheries" of the Marine Sciences Program of Galicia, belonging to the Complementary Science Plans of the Ministry of Science and Innovation and integrated into the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan (PRTR-C17.I1). It is funded through the Xunta de Galicia with NextGenerationEU funds and the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund of the European Union. In addition, it has had the collaboration of the DEMON project (Dissipation of Energy in Ocean Models and Connectivity), coordinated between the ICM-CSIC and the IEO-CSIC of A Coruña and funded by the State Research Agency (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and FEDER funds.

EPB contributes to the largest biodiversity database on the planet

Fri, 16 May 2025 08:09:00 +0000

This initiative, called BioTIME, is led by the University of St Andrews (United Kingdom) and has just published its second version, containing 12 million records with the abundance of 56,000 species in more than 553,000 marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats.

BioTIME 2.0 is the result of the collective work of hundreds of researchers and collaborators in citizen science initiatives that systematically collect observations on species abundance over time in different habitats. Its publication has been made possible thanks to the support from the European Research Council's H2020 program and the collaboration of 485 co-authors from more than 400 institutions in 40 countries. Among them are scientists from several CSIC centers, such as the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), which has provided 30 years of monthly inventories of plankton abundance and diversity in A Coruña since 1989 thanks to the RADIALES observation program.

BioTIME preserves and enhances the important heritage represented by systematic observation series for research in ecology and ecosystem management. These observations are essential for reliable predictions and effective conservation measures.

The BioTIME 2.0 database is freely available for use by researchers, conservationists, educators, and the general public at the project website: https://biotime.st-andrews.ac.uk

Reference: Dornelas, M. et al. BioTIME 2.0: Expanding and Improving a Database of Biodiversity Time Series. Global Ecology and Biogeography 34, e70003 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.70003

Pre-doctoral contract

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 09:34:00 +0000

The selection process for candidates to develop a PhD Thesis on the study of diet diversity and trophic position of mid trophic level marine fish. This thesis is included in the activities of the research project MTL-FISH (Mid Trophic Levels share of microbial and metazoan Food webs: Impact of Seasonal and between-Habitat variability) funded by the Spanish Research Agency.

Thesis objective: to investigate the influence of factors like the existence of temporal windows, seasonality, zonal variability, the availability and diversity of prey, or ontogenetic factors on diet diversity and trophic position of mid trophic level marine fish, through a comparative analysis of their diet. The selected PhD candidate will be part of the multidisciplinary research group Plankton Ecology and Biogeochemistry (EPB), receiving advanced training in a variety of analytical techniques, including microscopy, genomics, biochemistry and stable isotope analysis, as well as in the application of trophodynamic models and statistical techniques.

Place of work: Centro Oceanográfico de A Coruña. Instituto Español de Oceanografía. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. A Coruña (Spain)

Maximum contract duration: 4 years

Expected starting date: January 2025

Funding: Project PID2023-147149NB-I00

Principal Investigator: Antonio Bode Riestra (antonio.bode@ieo.csic.es)

More information and application: https://sede.csic.gob.es/tramites/convocatorias-de-personal/convocatoria/38031

New Postdoctoral Fellowship for studying micronekton in the EPB group

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 09:11:00 +0000

A new research project has been assigned to the EPB group to quantify functional diversity in mesopelagic communities. The scientific project TROF-MP will be carried out by Dr. Airam Sarmiento Lezcano between 2024 and 2030 and will address the relationships between the functional diversity of mesopelagic communities and ecosystem productivity.This project is a collaboration between the National Oceanography Centre (NOC, UK) (Prof. Clive Trueman), the Stockholm University (Sweden) (Prof. Monika Winder) and IEO-CSIC (Prof. Antonio Bode).

Project name: Trophic interactions and ecosystem processes in mesopelagic fishes (TROF-MP)

Project number: IN606B-2024/018

Call: Programa de apoyo a la etapa de formación posdoctoral 2024 - GAIN de la Xunta de Galicia

Type of action: Programa de apoyo a la etapa de formación posdoctoral 2024 - GAIN de la Xunta de Galicia

Granting authority: GAIN. Xunta de Galicia

Funding: 290.500 euros

Project starting date: 1 July 2024. Duration: 84 months

New Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for the EPB group

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 12:14:00 +0000

A new Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant has been assigned to the EPB group to quantify trophic linkages between inshore and offshore pelagic food webs. The scientific project PelCon will be carried out by Dr Rita García Seoane between 2024 and 2027 and will compare the mechanisms coupling coastal and oceanic food webs between the oligotrophic North Pacific Subtropical Gyre near Hawai’i Island and the productive upwelling waters of the North Eastern Atlantic Ocean near Galicia, NW Spain. This project is a collaboration between the University of Hawai’i (Dr. Brian N. Popp and Dr. Jeffrey C. Drazen) and the IEO-CSIC (Dr. Antonio Bode).

Project name: Disentangling processes controlling trophic connectivity between coastal and oceanic pelagic food webs (PelCon)

Project number: 101150001

Call: HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01

Type of action: HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships

Granting authority: European Research Executive Agency

Funding: 261,380.64 euro

Project starting date: 1 August 2024. Duration: 36 months

Preparation of a Doctoral Thesis proposal at the Oceanographic Center of A Coruña

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 08:50:00 +0000

The JAE-Intro ICU program of the CSIC announces 10-month scholarships for predoctoral specialization. The 2023 call includes an opportunity for the modality "PhD: Proposal for the direction of a doctoral/thematic thesis to request pre-doctoral assistance" within the Planktonic Ecology and Biogeochemistry (EPB) research group of the Oceanographic Center of A Coruña of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography.

Títle: Food traceability of marine organisms

Reference: JAEICU23_EX_0248

Duration: 10 months (until 31/12/2024), Funding: 1.000 euros/month

Supervisor: Antonio Bode (antonio.bode@ieo.csic.es)

Call open from 1st. to 30th September 2023

More information: https://sede.csic.gob.es/icu2023

Telematic application for the call: https://www.convocatorias.csic.es/convoca/

anuncio_JAE_ICU_EPB-1.pdf

Plankton in the new millennium: keynote lecture at the 2022 ICES Decadal Symposium

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 08:27:00 +0000

Recent changes in oceanic plankton are being reported at unprecedented rates. Most changes are related to environmental factors and many were identified as driven by climate, either through natural cycles or by anthropogenic effects. However, the separation of both effects is difficult because of the small size of most observational series. Moreover, some changes are related to trends and cycles while others were perceived as abrupt ecosystem shifts, often synchronized over large spatial scales.

As part of the activities of The Fourth Symposium on Decadal Variability of the North Atlantic and its Marine Ecosystems: 2010–2019 (https://decadal2022.imr.no/), from 20–22 June 2022 in Bergen, Norway, Antonio Bode opened Theme Session 2 (Decadal change and trends in North Atlantic/sub‐Arctic plankton and their ecosystems) with a keynote lecture entitled "Plankton in the new millennium: synchronic multidecadal trends and regime shifts".

More info:

https://www.ices.dk/news-and-events/news-archive/news/Pages/Decadal2022ABode.aspx

Oceans Special Issue "World Oceans Day 2022"

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 19:24:00 +0000

Oceans are the origin of life, connecting us all. However, climate change has led to the emergence of numerous challenges for oceans today. The MDPI journal OCEANS is honored to announce a new Special Issue to celebrate the World Oceans Day 2022 (June 8). The scope of this Special Issue includes but is not limited to ocean complexity, ocean impacts and challenges, and resilience and innovation. We encourage researchers from all areas of ocean science to submit abstracts for this Special Issue. We will then make a decision on the full manuscripts for this Special Issue or as a regular paper. Let us all take action together to preserve our ocean.

OCEANS is an open-access journal that normally charges authors a fee. However, MDPI has agreed to publish papers that have been prepared for this important issue free of any charge.

This will be a dynamic Special Issue, and articles will be published as soon as the reviewers and editors are ready to accept them, without waiting for the deadline for the entire Special Issue to arrive.

Dr. Sam Dupont
Prof. Dr. Antonio Bode
Dr. Michael W. Lomas
Prof. Dr. Pere Masqué
Dr. Diego Macías
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 8 June 2022.

4th Stable isotope course in ecology and environmental sciences

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 14:56:00 +0000

http://www.ebd.csic.es/Isotopos2022/index.html