Position: Post-doctoral Researcher
Contact: laurence.de.clippele@ed.ac.uk
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Dr Laurence De Clippele is a marine ecologist who studies cold-water coral reefs and has a general interest in marine biodiversity, biogeography, ecosystem functioning, trophic ecology and pollution. Currently, she works as part of the European Horizon 2020 iAtlantic project, a multidisciplinary research programme seeking to assess the health of deep-sea and open-ocean ecosystems across the full span of the Atlantic Ocean. She is also a lecturer in the Msc Marine Systems and Policies programme.
Her research focusses on:
- Ecology: studying patterns in biodiversity and behaviours of cold-water coral reef fauna based on ROV videos, imagery and acoustic recordings.
- Mapping: predictive modelling of the presence and biomass of cold-water coral reef fauna
- Ecosystem functions: quantifying the total nutrient cycling capacity of cold-water coral reefs
- Characterising: describing the geomorphology of coral mounds across the Atlantic.
Laurence enjoys combining academic research with developing and delivering public engagement activities and dissemination materials to connect and share our science with a wider audience. Her aim is to build a stronger relationship and a two-way dialogue between science and society. Examples are science-artist collaborations, Future Of Our Seas, Midlothian Science Festival, Edinburgh Science Festival, several video editing and design projects.
Prior to this, she was conducting research as part of the H2020 ATLAS project where she has also filled- in as ATLAS project manager. She was also a project assistant and team leader at the International Edinburgh Science Festival. Laurence did her PhD (Ecological and environmental controls on the fine-scale distribution of cold-water corals in the North-East Atlantic) at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh). Funded by the Leonardo Da Vinci Scholarship she also worked for 6 months at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen (Norway) on the fauna associated with cold-water gorgonians and seapens. Her masters is in Marine and Lacustrine Sciences and Management with a major in Ecology and her bachelors is in Biology, during which she worked at the Tjärnö Marine biological laboratory (recovery of cold-water coral reefs) (Sweden) and participated in a course on intertidal biodiversity at the Roscoff marine station (France).
Publications
De Clippele LH (2014) Mapping the treasures of the deep sea. The Marine Biologist 2: 20-21
De Clippele LH (2012) Master thesis in the Marine biology department at the University of Ghent and ILVO (Belgium): Assessing the trophic position of the invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in the Southern North Sea, using biochemical tracer techniques (stable isotopes and fatty acids).
De Clippele LH (2010) Bachelor thesis in the Protistology and Aquatic Ecology department at the University of Ghent: The potential application of herbivore amoeba for the biological control of harmful algae (cyanobacteria – Microcystis)