Position: PhD Student
SZN Dept: Integrative Marine Ecology
PhD program: University of Bremen and SZN
Supervisors: Dr. Ulisse Cardini, Prof. Christian Wild
Email: johanna.berlinghof(at)szn.it
Twitter: @SuperSeagrass
Web: SZN webpage
Web: Google scholar
Personal keywords: #Symbiosis, #BenthicEcology, #MarineBiogeochemistry, #StableIsotopes, #NitrogenCycle
Scientific interests in a nutshell:
Seagrasses are inhabited by a variety of associated organisms, including symbiotic microbes as well as invertebrates (e.g., sponges). Together with their host, they form the so-called ‘holobiont’. The partners within the holobiont are strongly interacting with each other, thus affecting fundamental processes, such as carbon or nitrogen cycling. Our understanding of the role of invertebrate-microbe-host associations in driving carbon or nitrogen cycling in coastal ecosystems is limited, and so is our ability to predict the consequences of human impacts on the functioning of these ecosystems. Therefore, I aim to investigate whether invertebrate-microbe-host associations act as drivers of biogeochemical cycling and whether and how environmental changes will affect fluxes of carbon and nitrogen at the organism and the ecosystem scale.
Selected publications:
Berlinghof J, Peiffer F, Marzocchi U, Munari M, Quero GM, Dennis L, Wild C, Cardini U (2022) The role of epiphytes in seagrass productivity under ocean acidification. Scientific Reports, 12:6249
Laspoumaderes C, Meunier CL, Magnin A, Berlinghof J, Elser JJ, Balseiro E, Torres G, Modenutti B, Tremblay N, Boersma M (2022) A common temperature dependence of nutritional demands in ectotherms. Ecology letters, 25:2189-2202