54th European Marine Biology Symposium (EMBS54)

The EMBS54 will take place in Dublin on August 25 to 29 2019. It will be hosted by University College Dublin, in the state-of-the-art O’Brien Centre for Science. In addition to the traditional general session covering any and all aspects of marine biology, the focus will be on the follow themes: Blue growth: The blue economy in Europe is valued at €500 billion per year and supports approximately 5.4 million jobs. Blue growth is the long term strategy to support sustainable growth in sectors such as aquaculture, tourism, biotechnology and ocean energy. In this session, we will explore the potential of marine organisms and ecosystems to underpin economic and societal benefits and examine potential risks and emerging approaches to sustainability. Rapid change: Organisms, communities and ecosystems change daily, seasonally, annually and over decades, centuries and millennia, under the influence of biological, ecological and evolutionary processes. It is becoming apparent, however, that rates of change are accelerating in the anthropocene, with increasing temperatures and rates of harvesting, disturbance and contamination all playing their part. This session will explore evidence for rapid changes in patterns and processes at any scale and at any level of organisation. Movement and redistribution of species: Seas and oceans are filled with species on the move.  Species may travel short distances every day to feed or avoid being eaten or undertake extraordinary larval or adult migrations to colonise new habitats or move between breeding and feeding areas. Species distributions are also changing at an accelerating rate and intensive research is underway to understand how and why. Research on any aspect of movement biology or species distribution will be captured in this session. Fundamental biological traits: Efforts to understand the roles of species in ecosystems, to manage and conserve them and to predict consequence of their loss continue to be hampered by limitations in our knowledge of their basic biology and ecological traits, such as diet, growth, dispersal and reproduction.  This session aims to capture recent research and synthesis of the fundamental biology of marine organisms and to explore innovative approaches to bridging the gaps in our knowledge of their traits.   LifeWatch Belgium will be present with the following oral presentations: Goossens, Reubens, Torreele, Moens - Tracking European seabass in the southern North Sea (Tuesday 27 August, 11:10) Vandepitte, De Pooter, Lanssens, Oset-Garcia, Waumans, Vanhoorne, Hernandez - 15 years of the European Ocean Biodiversity Information System (EurOBIS) (Tuesday 27 August, 14:50) Dekeyzer, Decock, Verfaille, Vanhoome, Lanssens, Vandepitte - Marine species traits in the LifeWatch Species Information Backbone (Wednesday 28 August, 10:00)   More information can be found on the link below.