LABORATORY FOR MOLECULAR MARINE ECOLOGY

Welcome to the LMME

The aim of our research group is to understand the dependency between environmental cues (e.g. light, temperature, and tide) that underlie circadian and other rhythms in symbiotic marine organisms and reef-building corals as well as other cnidarians, such as sea anemones, in regulating physiology and behavior. Corals serve as our dominant model system to investigate the dependency between two clock-system associations, coral and symbiotic algae, or non-associations in a simple multicellular organism on physiological and molecular levels. In addition, our lab studies symbiosis and sleep in cnidarians, the effects of anthropogenic light pollution on corals and reef fish, the paleo reconstruction and phylogenetics of coral reefs from different geographic regions, as well as alternative techniques for coral reef restoration and monitoring. Our research is conducted globally in Eilat - Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea,  Japan - Okinawa Sea, Australia - Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef, Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, and the Maldives.