Dharma Reyes Macaya

One of my PhD goals is to understand the stable isotopes signatures of carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) from different species of benthic foraminifera at the Equatorial and South East Pacific. The δ13C and δ18O values in benthic foraminifera have been widely used in palaeoceanography as tracers for deep-sea circulation. However, there are still uncertainties about the factors (and their magnitudes) that control the isotope disequilibrium between different species and the overlying bottom-waters. These factors can change regionally and be expressed differently depending of the species. It is, therefore, important to understand the stable isotope offset of the different benthic foraminifera species to ambient regional environmental settings in order to improve paleoceanographic interpretations.

This year I had the opportunity to present the preliminary results of this goal in the International Symposium of Foraminifera in Edinburgh during the second week of June. The conference hosted more than 300 participants, with over 400 contributions in 20 sessions. The sessions topics were diverse and included oral and poster presentations from foraminifera reserchers from around the word.

The first day of the conference I presented the work titled “Stable isotope composition of oxygen in Benthic Foraminifera from the Equatorial and South East Pacific: Preliminary Results” in the section “Foraminifera in the Quaternary Research”. The other days I presented our MARUM outreach project “Once upon a time a scientific fairy tale” (https://www.marum.de/en/Discover/Once-upon-a-time.html) in the section “Education and Art”.

This conference is one of my favourite conferences because you can have helpful discussions in high specialisation topics. Additionally, the community is small and the atmosphere during the full conference is very familiar.

Aside from the scientific program, while in Edinburgh I met my external supervisor Babette Hoogakker from the Lyell (BGS) Centre located in the campus of Herriot-Watt University and our colleague Laetitia Pichevin from the University of Edinburgh to plan my research stay that will occur in the beginning of 2019.

Overall, the conference was a nice experience, and I would like to thank GLOMAR and DAAD for the financial support, which made my participation possible in FORAMS 2018. I look forward to participating in the next symposium that will take place in Italy in 2022!