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Neele Meyer

Institution: Senckenberg am Meer, Wilhelmshaven
Room: Senckenberg am Meer, room 2-2-07
Phone: +49 4421 9475-247
E-mail: [Bitte aktivieren Sie Javascript]
Other webpage(s): Neele's Senckenberg web page

 

Neele Meyer

PhD project:

Patterns and Pace of Polar Bioerosion

This PhD project will study bioerosion in polar environments and is expected to foster the knowledge on the poorly known biosedimentary dynamics of carbonate production in polar carbonate factories. Studying comparable substrates from selected sites in the Arctic and Antarctic will allow a direct comparison of bioerosion traces and trace assemblages between the polar regions of both hemispheres. In the marine realm, investigations of bioerosion in tropical coral reefs are far advanced and in temperate settings at least existing, while studies about bioerosion of polar carbonates are lacking. This gap in research is the subject of my PhD project.

The PhD project comprises four interlinked objectives:

  1. Study the ichnodiversity of polar micro- and macrobioerosion, grazing, and attachment etching. The inventory of bioerosion traces will be the basis for the following objectives.
  2. Analyse the investigated traces in terms of a bathymetrical distribution pattern, which is basically a function of the photic zonation. Since such analyses are so far only available for the tropical and warm temperate waters, a comparison with new findings will be interesting and will help to interpret the palaeobathymetry of fossil cold-water carbonates.
  3. Microborings are promising (palaeo-) temperature proxies. Thus, studying the latitudinal limits in terms of the ecophysiological tolerance limits of key bioeroders with respect to seasonality and temperature will help to support palaeoenvironmental and palaeobiogeographical assessments.
  4. Comparison of all findings from the objectives, both between different study sites from the Artic region plus Artic vs. Antarctic, will foster the knowledge about the applicability of bioerosion traces as palaeoenvironmental indicators.

To study all objectives, the core of the work programme is the visualization, inventory, and ichnodiversity analysis of the various types of bioerosion traces in the different sample materials from the polar regions of both hemispheres. Sample material is planned to be from several depth stations of the different locations, which spans the intertidal down to aphotic water depths. The methodological part of the study comprises macroscopic and microscopic imaging of surficial bioerosion patterns, carried out with a Nikon D700, a Keyence VHX-2000D, and by scanning electron microscopy. Based on the various methods, ichnotaxa will be identified, semi-quantified, and funnelled into an ichnodiversity analysis. The latter analysis will be completed by calculations of numerous indices and the application of statistical software packages.

Thesis committee:

Prof. Dr. André Freiwald University of Bremen and Senckenberg am Meer, Wilhelmshaven
Dr. Max Wisshak Senckenberg am Meer, Wilhelmshaven
Prof. Dr. Dierk Hebbeln University of Bremen

 

GLOMAR Research Theme C