Abstract

Marine unicellular eukaryotic organisms, in particular protists, are among the least explored compartments of biodiversity, yet they are suspected to profoundly impact marine ecosystem functioning, global biogeochemical cycles and climate. They can also offer unexplored functions and be used to propose new indicators of marine environments’ statuses. BioMarKs aimed at exploring this unknown compartment of life and assessing the taxonomic and functional complexity of protistan communities along the European coastlines to a ) establish a baseline of protists biodiversity in European coastal waters, and apply this data to environmental and evolutionary questions on protists; b) assess new functions that can be derived from this unexplored taxonomic group and evaluate their use to monitor the health of marine environments.

Ramon Massana

Staff scientist

I am microbial ecologists with a deep interest in protist ecology and evolution