With a PhD in evolutionary, functional and community ecology, my work is part of the ESTEEM project (‘Effects of multiple stress factors at different ecological scales on marine fish’) led by INRAE and EDF.

My mission is to better understand and predict the effects of climate change on the quality of estuarine nurseries, on which the healthy development of juveniles of many marine species depends.

My first step will be to conduct a retrospective study on the evolution of: (1) the abiotic parameters involved in global changes, (2) the abundance of two species that are indicators of nursery quality (the common sole and the European sea bass), and (3) their prey. This work will initially enable us to study the correlations between changes in abiotic parameters (particularly temperature and contamination) and their consequences on the various biotic links in estuarine food webs. Subsequently, this work will enable us to study recent trends in order to define prospective scenarios for the abiotic and biotic conditions expected over the coming century. These scenarios will then be used to feed into food web models in order to study the propagation of the effects of global changes at the estuarine ecosystem level. These predictions will enable us to estimate the future of each of these links, taking into account their ecophysiological characteristics. Finally, a change in ecological scale will enable us to deduce the effects on populations of sole and sea bass.

Contact

• florence.mounier@inrae.fr