INDIFUN-AI

INDIFUN-AI is a research project, funded in 2024 for a duration of three years by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Our role in this project is to quantify functional biodiversity and to develop robust bioindicators of ecosystem health that characterize key taxa and plankton communities in the North Atlantic.

Rationale

Marine biodiversity is not only fascinating but also essential for oceanic ecosystems worldwide. Species within these ecosystems perform critical functions such as organic matter decomposition, nutrient cycling, and primary production. Yet, global biodiversity loss is one of today’s most urgent environmental challenges, threatening these functions and ecosystem stability.

Despite over 200 years of study, marine plankton, including fungi and fungus-like species, remain poorly understood. In freshwater systems, such organisms play a key role in the food web, for example, as phytoplankton parasites. However, their roles in marine ecosystems and their diversity are largely unknown. A loss of biodiversity implicates that some ecosystem functions can no longer be performed, underscoring the need to understand species composition and their roles in ecosystem processes. This is particularly critical for remote open-ocean plankton communities, where the small size and lack of morphological details of organisms, combined with geographical inaccessibility, have hindered detailed study. Advances in semi-automated observation methods now allow for high-resolution data collection, enabling better understanding of these ecosystems.

Overall goal

In this context, the aim of INDIFUN-AI is to explore the diversity and ecological roles of marine fungus-like organisms within the marine food web. This will help improve the assessment and evaluation of climate-related changes and identify reliable indicators for these changes. For these aims, INDIFUN-AI will collect and characterize data including molecular, imaging and microscopy from the Hausgarten LTER observatory in the Fram Strait obtained from 2009 to 2023 to:

1. study the overall diversity of the entire Arctic plankton community,
2. close knowledge gaps of under-investigated plankton groups like mycoplankton that may play crucial ecosystem functions,
3. use the datasets to model future biodiversity scenarios and develop machine learning based indicator systems of ecosystem health, and
4. collaborate with stakeholders to create policy recommendations for integrating these indicators into routine monitoring processes.

Our contribution

INDIFUN-AI is a research consortium, consisting of several groups in Northern Germany, including the Alfred-Wegener Institue (AWI), the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research GEOMAR, University of Bremen, and the University of Oldenburg.

The role of my research group in this consortium is the development of innovative bioindicators to monitor and assess biodiversity in Arctic marine ecosystems. Utilizing comprehensive datasets from the Arctic's pelagic zones, we apply advanced data science to reconstruct species’ functional traits and assess biodiversity dynamics. The research centres on understanding temporal changes and turnover in functional biodiversity, investigating the impact of environmental drivers, and designing AI-powered bioindicators capable of providing early detection of ecosystem changes.