2 PhD projects – see below
(1) PhD Project: The ecological role and climate vulnerability of cold-water corals: patterns of phenology, habitat use, and species interactions
Deadline: 12 January 2025
Supervisors:
Dr Laurence De Clippele, School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine
Prof Colin Torney, School of Mathematics & Statistics
Dr Johanne Vad, University of Edinburgh
International partners:
Ellen Kenchington, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Fisheries and Oceans, Canada Saskia Brix, Senckenberg Research Institute, Germany
Where: University of Glasgow, UK
Summary
This project addresses a critical gap in our understanding of how fish and motile invertebrates use deep-sea habitats, particularly cold-water coral reefs and gardens. Unlike shallow coastal systems, little is known about how species in deeper environments (>100 m) utilise these structurally complex habitats across daily, seasonal, and inter-annual cycles. As biodiversity
hotspots that support ecologically and commercially important species, their role in shaping behaviour, interactions, and movement remains poorly understood. Given their vulnerability to climate change and human pressures, uncovering how and when species depend on them is vital for predicting ecosystem resilience.
Using long-term, high-temporal-resolution time-lapse imagery from key North Atlantic sites (Norway, Iceland, and Canada), this research will quantify temporal and spatial patterns in the abundance, behaviour, and movement of fish and motile invertebrates. Species-level analyses will identify the drivers of phenological cycles, while community-level investigations will reveal
interactions, synchrony, and predator–prey dynamics. Mapping microhabitat use within coral frameworks will further uncover how structural complexity shapes species’ movements and ecological roles.
By linking these patterns to environmental drivers, the project will provide critical insights into how climate change and human impacts could reshape phenology, habitat use, and resilience in deep-sea ecosystems. These insights are vital for protecting vulnerable habitats and for planetary health, as the resilience of deep-sea ecosystems underpins climate regulation and
global biodiversity
Background:
Deep-sea habitats such as cold-water coral reefs, gardens, and sponge grounds are structurally complex ecosystems that serve as biodiversity and nutrient cycling hotspots. They provide essential habitat for a wide range of sessile and motile species, including commercially valuable fish and invertebrates [1]. Despite their importance, these ecosystems are increasingly threatened by climate change and human activities such as trawling and oil
pollution. Their long-lived, slow-growing nature makes them especially vulnerable to degradation and biodiversity loss. Climate change is projected to shift their distribution northwards and into deeper waters, altering not only their extent but also the ecological roles they play for associated fauna [2].
In shallow coastal systems, many species rely on a range of benthic habitats for food, shelter, and nursery grounds. In contrast, the ways fish and invertebrates utilise habitats in deeper offshore environments (>100 m) remain far less studied, with only a handful of investigations to date [3]. Time-lapse imagery from benthic platforms in sponge grounds has proven to be a
powerful, non-destructive tool to reveal when and how deep-sea habitats can act as important nurseries, feeding grounds, and refuges for fish [3]. The observations made from the image data were closely aligned with independent fishery survey results, with increases in juvenile Redfish observed in the imagery from autumn 2022 to spring 2023 corresponding to elevated trawl survey catches in the summer of 2023. Because imaging captures near-continuous, fine-scale temporal dynamics (e.g., diel, seasonal shifts) that conventional trawling cannot, this method can serve as an “early-warning tool” to indicate population and behavioural shifts, informing fisheries management that avoids the habitat damage inherent in bottom-contact
sampling [3].
By revealing the timing of key life-history events and interactions, image data can help us study the phenology of species and communities to understand how they depend on deep-sea habitats across multiple temporal scales. Phenological insights can shed light on how motile and sessile species interact over daily, seasonal, and interannual cycles, revealing patterns of feeding, shelter, and nursery use [3]. Such knowledge is crucial for predicting the resilience of these vulnerable ecosystems under changing ocean conditions, including ocean warming. To date, no long-term studies have examined the role of cold-water coral reefs and gardens for fish and small invertebrates at these temporal scales.
Microhabitat use by motile species can furthermore help us understand the role of structural complexity [4] and the degradation state of coral framework. This is important to understand the impact of ocean acidification, which is predicted to crumble cold-water coral reefs and therefore reduce their complexity. There are currently no long-term studies investigating what drives the microhabitat use of mobile species in cold-water coral reefs.
Aim:
This project aims to understand what drives phenological and microhabitat use patterns over time in cold-water coral reefs and gardens by leveraging existing and newly collected long-term, high-temporal-resolution time-lapse imagery from three key North Atlantic locations (Norway, Iceland, and Canada). By combining these datasets with environmental variables
such as temperature, salinity, currents, and chlorophyll a, the project will achieve the following objectives:
- Species-level phenology: Understand what drives temporal patterns in the abundance and behaviour of fish and motile invertebrates, addressing diel, seasonal, and inter-annual changes, to understand how individual species respond to environmental changes and how this may change in the future.
- Community-level phenology: Understand what drives temporal patterns of fish and motile invertebrate communities to understand interactions and synchronicity between species, and reveal predator-prey dynamics.
- Microhabitat use: Understand what drives differences in the micro-distribution of species over time to understand how motile species benefit from the structural complexity provided by corals, use resources and interact with each other and potential predators, to shed light on their ecological roles. Through analysing data collected in more temperate (i.e. Canada, Norway ) and more arctic locations (i.e. Iceland), this research will provide critical insights into the resilience and adaptability of deep-sea habitats in the face of climate change. These findings can inform conservation strategies and management policies aimed at protecting these vulnerable ecosystems, ensuring their continued contribution to planetary health and biodiversity. The student will use interdisciplinary approaches to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between benthic species, their habitats, and environmental conditions under
both current and future scenarios.
Training outcomes:
- Become proficient in using a variety of manual and cutting-edge machine learning tools to analyse large image datasets.
- Gain taxonomic expertise of species associated with cold-water coral reefs and gardens.
- Develop expertise in using a variety of temporal and spatial statistical approaches to analyse complex long-term species and community data sets.
- Gain experience in deploying a variety of monitoring tools, through joining a research expedition.
- Develop strong organisational and data management skills, through working with and collecting new image data sets.
- Develop skills to communicate across disciplines and learn to integrate interdisciplinary datasets, through working across disciplines and with international partners.
- Learn to articulate findings clearly and effectively, through preparing scientific manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
- Gain experience in public speaking and scientific communication, through presenting at academic conferences and at public engagement events.
- Build project management skills, including planning timelines and troubleshooting technical challenges, through leading a project that involves large datasets from three locations, and through being involved in expedition planning.
References:
[1] Henry and Roberts (2017) Global biodiversity in cold-water coral reef ecosystems. Marine animal forests: the ecology of benthic biodiversity hotspots, pp.235-256
[2] Morato, T. et al (2020) Climate‐induced changes in the suitable habitat of cold‐water corals and commercially important deep‐sea fishes in the North Atlantic. Global Change Biology, 26(4), pp.2181-2202.
[3] De Clippele et al. (2025). Fish use of deep-sea sponge habitats evidenced by long-term high-resolution monitoring. Scientific reports, 15(1), p.17656.
[4] De Clippele et al. (2019). The diversity and ecological role of non-scleractinian corals (Antipatharia and Alcyonacea) on scleractinian cold-water coral mounds. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6, p.184.
(2) PhD Project: Sounding out the deep: using AI and passive acoustic monitoring to reveal spatial and temporal patterns in deep-sea ecosystems
Summary
This PhD will explore how passive acoustic monitoring and AI can be used to study deep-sea ecosystems such as coral reefs, coral gardens, and sponge grounds. The student will characterise soundscapes across habitats and build a library of deep-sea biological sounds. They will develop and apply deep learning models to automatically detect and classify acoustic events. The project will reveal spatial and temporal patterns in deep-sea biodiversity and environmental change.
Supervisors: Dr Laurence De Clippele (University of Glasgow), Dr Cornelia Oedekoven (University of St Andrews), Dr Tiffany Vlaar (University of Glasgow), Dr Abraham Smith (University of Copenhagen)
Collaborators: Prof Saskia Brix (Senckenberg Institute), Dr Ellen Kenchington (Fisheries and Oceans Canada)
Deadline: International candidates need to reach out to me (laurence.declippele@glasgow.ac.uk) by 8 December. We can only select 1 international candidate to go to the next stage. UK candidates need to apply by 5 January. Further information and guidelines can be found on the Iapetus website.
Where: University of Glasgow, UK
Online Applicant Q&A workshop:
Iapetus will be holding an online Q&A application workshop. This is an opportunity for applicants to listen to a brief presentation on the application process as well as to ask any questions they may have. It will be held on Wednesday 26th November at 2pm. The link to register for the workshop is here and is also on the website.
Laurence De Clippele's Research Group 