Claudia Hill

Institution:	University of Bremen
Office:	UFT, room 2150
E-mail:	[Bitte aktivieren Sie Javascript]
Other webpage(s):	Claudia's working group

PhD Project

Determining the drivers of coral associated dentirification

Coral reefs inhabit oligotrophic waters where essential nutrients for growth and reproduction, such as nitrogen, are scarce. Consequently, coral holobionts host nitrogen cycling microbes such as nitrogen fixers (diazotrophs) that fix atmospheric nitrogen, making it bioavailable for the coral to use. Nitrogen must exist in a fine balance, however, and therefore denitrifying microbes are hypothesised to alleviate the coral from excess nitrogen. Little is known about the pathway of denitrification in corals however, and therefore my PhD project aims to determine how denitrification in corals behaves in a stable state in response to natural envrionmental change, such as varying temperatures and nutrient fluxes across a year. Furthermore, I aim to determine how denitrification behaves in coral holobionts with different trophic strategies, and will thereby be investigating a range of hard corals that exist on a heterotrophic spectrum. My PhD work will draw from a combination of microbial ecology, biogeochemistry and coral physiology to investigate the research aims.

Thesis Committee

Prof. Dr. Christian Wild	University of Bremen
Dr. Arjen Tilstra	University of Bremen
Prof. Dr. Raquel Peixoto	King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
Prof. Dr. Susana Carvalho	King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
Dr. Neus Garcias Bonet	King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia