8th Trait-based Approaches to Ocean Life
in connection with the
6th HIFMB Symposium on Functional Marine Biodiversity
Save the Date: June 21-24, 2027
Location: Alter Landtag Oldenburg (Tappenbeckstr. 1, 26122 Oldenburg, GER)
The four‑day, in‑person workshop will bring together senior and early‑career scientists to explore how measurable organismal traits (e.g., body size, lifespan, nutrient use) can be used to link marine biodiversity with ecosystem function and biogeochemistry. The program combines three sessions devoted to core trait‑based research with a new, interdisciplinary cluster that connects traits to microbiology, geochemistry, and environmental policy. Highlights include:
- Keynote lectures (30 min) followed by four short talks per session
- Poster sessions for deeper discussion of current work
- Breakout groups that address pre‑submitted and emerging topics, fostering cross‑disciplinary dialogue
- Social events: early‑career networking event, icebreaker and a “walk‑and‑talk” gathering on Wednesday afternoon
- Opening lecture by a plant ecologist to compare terrestrial and marine trait frameworks
Advance
functional‑diversity perspectives on marine ecosystem processes
Bridge
methodological gaps between marine and terrestrial trait research
Explore
how trait information can inform policy and biodiversity‑ conservation targets
Session Overview
The mechanistic promise of trait-based approaches to ocean science is to predict how species perform alone and in communities. Investment in defense traits does reduce prey mortality, but comes at the cost of reduced maximum growth. Organism size and shape predicts minimal resource requirements. All of these approaches are well rooted in theory, but do we actually know how much they predict the physiological and ecological performance of species?
Trait-based approaches have mainly played out in a trophic and competitive space in a playing field of resource acquisition and defense. Not only does this emphasis ignore mutualistic interactions or “community traits” (i.e. traits related to interactions and not individuals, e.g. interaction network properties), it also needs a metacommunity approach where interaction traits are amended by mobility traits and tolerance traits along spatial and temporal environmental gradients.
Trait-based approaches have mainly focused on ecological strategies and present-day species performance, while traits themselves are shaped by evolutionary history and ongoing adaptation. This session explores traits from an evolutionary perspective, adding a time axis from paleoecological reconstructions of past environments and communities to projections of future developments. We ask how trait variation and trait correlations reveal the directions and constraints of adaptation under climate change.
Measuring traits is often tedious and restricted to a subset of easily measured morphological or physiological traits. By contrast, the promise of modern ‘omics is to reflect all potential functions of a species as well as the actually active functions and their metabolic reflections. This session asks whether molecular information will replace trait-based approaches for a predictive functional ecology.
Trait-based approaches to ocean science has been a natural science centred approach to understanding marine ecosystems. However, almost all marine ecosystems are affected, some even highly transformed, by humans. It seems timely to ask if trait-based ecology has anything to provide for decision making and whether a discussion of trait-based approaches in a broader, inter- and transdisciplinary context is useful.
By aggregating across species based on shared traits, trait-based approaches can reveal fundamental ecosystem-level processes determining species coexistence or elemental cycling. A comparable challenge exists in biogeochemistry: dissolved and particulate organic carbon, both major carbon reservoirs in aquatic and terrestrial systems, consist of extraordinarily diverse and complex mixtures of compounds, with similarities to biodiverse ecosystems. This session explores whether trait-based concepts can be adapted to the non-living world, to characterise organic carbon pools and their turnover across marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments, linking ecology and biogeochemistry.
Invited Keynote Speakers
Prof. Dr. Holger Kreft
Head of Department Biodiversity, Macroecology & Biogeography, University of Göttingen, Germany
Prof. Suzana Gonçalves Leles, PhD
Assistant professor on marine microbial adaptive responses, University of Texas, USA
Dr. Clare Ostle
CPR Research Fellow and Coordinator Pacific CPR survey, Marine Biological Association, UK
Prof. Dr. Elisa Schaum
Plankton Ecology and Evolution, University of Hamburg, Germany
Prof. Dr. Andrew Tanentzap
Canada Research Chair in Climate Change and Northern Ecosystems, Trent University, Canada
Prof. Jackie Lee Weissman, PhD
Assistant professor and head of the Microbial Genomes and Metagenomes to Unravel Traits Lab (mGAMUT), Stony Brook University, USA
Prof. Dr. Alice Vadrot
Professor for International Relations and the Environment, University of Vienna, Austria
Sign up here and get informed as soon as registration for the symposium opens.
- 7th Workshop (2025): Pacific Grove, USA
- 6th Workshop (2023): Copenhagen, Denmark
- 5th Workshop (2022): Tennessee, USA
- 4th Workshop (2019): Buckinghamshire, UK
- 3rd Workshop (2017): Soldstrand, Bergen, Norway
- 2nd Workshop (2015): New Hampshire, USA
- 1st Workshop (2013): Copenhagen, Denmark
Good to know
We believe that everyone (participants and staff) has the right to be in a respectful, safer and welcoming environment at our symposium. We are dedicated to provide an inclusive symposium experience for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, language, political or other option, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, religion or economic class. Discrimination, harassment, bullying and/or patronising behaviour has no place at the symposium, or in any professional context, and will not be tolerated.