Ecological factors driving diversity and distribution patterns in the placozoa

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernd Schierwater
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 264978904

The enigmatic animal phylum Placozoa has been attracting much attention from many areas of biological research. Placozoans are the only animals where the genome has been sequenced before the life cycle and basic ecology have been known. Reasons include that these animals represent the most primitive of all metazoan bauplans, are extremely amenable to experimental manipulations and harbor the smallest metazoan genome, which is regarded the best living surrogate of an ancestral metazoan genome. We here propose to close some gaps between our extensive knowledge on the genetics on the one side and the extremely poor knowledge on the ecology on the other side. Specifically we will describe some fundamental ecological niche parameters for placozoans, and address wide open dispersal, endemism and sympatry questions. We hereby take advantage of the existing genetic knowledge and new integrative approaches.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants