Marine biodiversity on Danish reefs

BSc or MSc Project

Reefs in Natura 2000 areas are designated as a protected habitat type to safeguard various threatened, rare, or characteristic animal and plant species as well as habitat types. The establishment of new reefs has also been used to restore marine habitats and enhance biodiversity. However, there are few scientific studies addressing the natural variation in species richness on different Danish reefs.

In this project, you will work with Danish monitoring data on reefs, covering more than 25 reefs over a period of more than 25 years. The aim could be, for example, to investigate whether there is a decline in species richness on reefs affected by low-salinity water from the Baltic Sea or to explore how functional and taxonomic diversity changes with reef depth.

Contact:

Helle Buur, Department of Ecoscience – hbu@ecos.au.dk
Mikael Sejr, Department of Ecoscience – mse@ecos.au.dk
Jakob Thyrring, Department of Ecoscience – Thyrring@ecos.au.dk

The project proposal has been submitted 20.01.2025