PALEOWEB
Deep-time Climate Change Impact on Marine Food Webs
The aim of this project is to develop a quantitative model that can predict how the structure and functioning of marine food webs were affected by SST changes, using paleontological and paleoclimatic data. Present-day marine ecosystems, especially the eastern Mediterranean marine ecosystem (EMME), are affected by multiple stressors, such as climate change, biological invasions, and anthropogenic impacts. In contrast, the Pleistocene EMME was only affected by severe climatic oscillations, including warming periods that can be used as analogues of current and forecasted climate warming. Therefore, modeling the Pleistocene EMME food web will allow us to isolate the effect of climate warming on marine ecosystems.
The PALEOWEB project (2022-2022) was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and implemented at the University of Vienna.
Team
Konstantina Agiadi - University of Vienna, Austria (PI)
Martin Zuschin - University of Vienna, Austria (Host)
Frédéric Quillévéré - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France
Efterpi Koskeridou & Danae Thivaiou - National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Iuliana Vasiliev - Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Germany
Marta Coll - Instituto de Ciencias del Mar, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain
Masters students
Theo Sommeville - Thesis title: "Mediterranean fish biomass changes across Pleistocene glacial–interglacial transitions"
Antoine Vite - Thesis title:"Changes in foraminifera biomass in the Eastern Mediterranean across the Early–Middle Pleistocene Transition"
Antonia Porz - Thesis title:"Mollusc size and metabolic rate changes across Pleistocene glacial–interglacial transitions in the eastern Mediterranean"
Kobe Simoens - University of Ghent, Belgium (Intern)
Renata Lukić - University of Zagreb, Croatia (Intern)
