Protecting corals with protists
Naturalis Biodiversity CenterElsa is Canadian but studied in Europe. Starting as a geologist in Switzerland, she obtained her master’s degree in Munich and found an interesting PhD project on coral reefs in Germany but couldn’t apply because she was already living in Germany. “I was told that because 4D-REEF is an international training network, there are probably other PhD projects in Europe. I applied in Portugal and in the Netherlands. I got in at Naturalis and really like the museum and how efficient and direct Dutch people are.” “Just like me”, she adds.
Saving corals
During the PhD project Elsa studied foraminifera, or forams as she calls them lovingly. But what exactly are they? “They are really tiny, but very big for a unicellular organism. You can see them by eye. Most of them are as big as the head of a needle. They are often overlooked. But they are very interesting. Due to their short lifespan foraminifera react quickly to environmental changes like water pollution and other factors of climate change”, Elsa explains.
For her project she focussed on large foraminifera that live on the seafloor, as they have a similar lifestyle to coral. They calcify and have a symbiotic relation with photosynthetic algae. Elsa describes how monitoring these foraminifera can save corals: “When the environmental conditions change. There will be a shift in the community composition of the forams. If you sample forams on a regular basis you can tell the conditions are changing and you can act before the corals are impacted.”
Finding the forams
As important as monitoring the foraminifera is, it is also a lot of work according to Elsa. “It is really time-consuming to take a scoop of sand and look for all the species. If we want to use forams as a warning signal for coral degradation it would be good to upscale the speed of the process.” That’s why she used DNA to identify the different foraminifera species. “We found a mitochondrial marker that works well for large benthic (living on the seafloor) forams. And that’s the biggest innovation of my PhD; to create a workflow using DNA in order to quantify and compare what we get from counting the forams and from the number of sequences from the sequencer”, she adds.
International relations
Ideally, Elsa would like to see the monitoring being organized locally. “I try to tell people it’s possible to use forams for monitoring. It is not essential to use DNA. It’s easier if you can, but also more expensive. The message I want to pass is that integrating forams to monitoring programs is important. They are not necessarily easy to see. But if you know what you’re looking for you can see them.” She put in the extra effort to make her research accessible for the Indonesian people. “To strengthen the relationship with Indonesia I also wrote the summary of my thesis in Indonesian. If they are looking for methods for monitoring coral reefs, they can find what I did and see if they can apply it or get into contact with me or others that can help them.”
Continuing as a postdoc
Elsa has already started a postdoc project at Naturalis on foraminifera. The idea is to combine forams from different ecosystems in the future, she says. “I am transiting towards the North Sea, but I also still like coral reefs. I get a lot of samples from our collaborators in South-East Asia. I have students that continue working on this. Also, there is no official reference genome for foraminifera yet. So I am working on that too.”
Fighting for the underdogs
That Elsa has come to like forams is clear when she talks about her public outreach activities with a smile on her face: “I gave presentations and made drawings of forams for the kids in the museum to make them aware that there are a lot more lifeforms in this world than we think and some of them are really small. I think the world of fungi, protists and bacteria is not really shown here. I even spend some time making comics I call Foram Life. It’s a story about Phil and Rick (two foraminifera) and they’re doing some funny things.”
If people want to find forams themselves and wonder about these curious lifeforms they don’t have to travel to Indonesia. “You don’t have to go to a coral reef. You can just grab a microscope and some sand here on the beach”, Elsa says.
Plans for the future
Elsa has now settled in the Netherlands and wants to stay even if it means she has to leave science and look for another type of job. “We bought a house and I have a kid so I don’t want to move. I have a postdoc position at Naturalis for two years and I hope I can stay. I’m sure I’m going to be happy whatever I do, but I really hope to stay a scientist.” And it’s clear that she’s very passionate about it as she adds: “I like to write, I like to analyse and collect data. There’s so much data out there I really like to make sense of it all. Everyone that works in science contributes to a greater understanding of our world and that’s great.”
More information
Text: Naturalis Biodiversity Center
Photos: Bram Belloni; Wyville Thomson, Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger 1873-1876. Zoology Vol. 9 Foraminifera, 1884; Elsa B. Girard