BIOcean5D

Context

Marine biodiversity sustains ecosystem services for planetary and human health. Recent surveys of marine ecosystems have unveiled our ignorance of the richness and functioning of marine life, which is changing in the Anthropocene at a faster pace than terrestrial life.

Objective

BIOcean5D will create a unique opportunity to bridge molecular/subcelular biology to organismal biology, theoretical ecology and econometrics, and marine complex systems to social sciences, toward the sustainable preservation of our oceans and seas.

A focus is to understand pan-European biodiversity land-to-sea gradients and ecosystem services, including marine exposomes. New data will be harmonized with existing data into an open-access data hub, leveraging international infrastructures, and generating transformative, cross-technologies/cross-scales standard marine biodiversity knowledge at the socioecosystem level.

Knowledge will inform and constrain:

• New theories and models of marine biodiversity ecological and evolutionary dynamics and drivers, at both taxonomic and functional scales
• A portfolio of novel holistic indicators of marine ecosystem health
• Innovative methods and protocols for economic and legal valuations of marine biodiversity and services integrating the dynamical and functional complexity of marine life.

Consortium

BIOcean5D unites major European centers in molecular/cell biology, marine biology, and sequencing from 11 countries, to build a unique suite of technologies, protocols, and models allowing holistic reexploration of marine biodiversity, from viruses to mammals, from genomes to holobionts, across multiple spatial and temporal scales stretching from pre-industrial to today.