Audrey Mat

Rhythm and blue

PostDoctoral Fellow: Dr Audrey Mat
Scientific Sponsors: Dr Marjolaine Matabos and Dr Jozée Sarrazin (LEP, Ifremer), Dr Caroline Fabioux (Lemar, UBO) and Dr Arnaud Huvet (Lemar, Ifremer)
LabexMER Research Axis 3: Geobiological interactions in extreme environments.
With the support of Axis 6: Evolution of marine habitats and adaptation of populations.

Environmental cycles strongly impact living organisms and have favored the selection of biological clocks, which temporally organize living systems from behavior to metabolism. These clocks are endogenous and are entrained by external cues called zeitgebers (time-givers). Biological rhythms are ubiquitous across taxa, from cyanobacteria to vertebrates and plants. They are adaptive, as they confer organisms the ability to anticipate changes in their environments. In the darkness of these ecosystems, the deep oceans are not aperiodic zones and oceanic internal tides – internal waves with tidal periodicity – occur throughout all depths worldwide. In the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, tidal and diurnal periodicities have been reported to influence vent species behavior and abundance at 2000 m depth. The project Rhythm & Blue aims to investigate the temporal ecology and chronobiology of deep-sea ecosystems focusing on the mussel of genus Bathymodiolus, one of the dominant macroorganisms in chemosynthesis-based communities around hydrothermal vents and cold-water seeps in the deep sea.