FEAST focus #22 (07/2006, p.4)
Dr. Dirk Erpenbeck is a Postdoctoral fellow in the Biodiversity Program at the Queensland Museum. Dirk is already familiar with international research: among other grants he received two ERASMUS fellowships to Sweden and Spain, he is a German national having a PhD. from the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) in the Netherlands. He started a Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship (OIF) in May 2005 to work on Sponge Evolution (Porifera).
The project
Dirk attended a seminar about Marie Curie fellowships during his PhD. in Amsterdam. His decision to come to Australia was facilitated by the ongoing collaboration with his supervisor and Prof. John Hooper, Queensland Museum. Having a Marie Curie OIF was certainly a very good opportunity for this collaborative project. Despite a very good assessment of the project, his path to a successful application was quite long, including nearly 7 months of contract negotiation. Dirk was the first OIF from his state in Germany.
The project develops a first comprehensive molecular phylogeny of “keratose” (horny) sponges on all taxonomic levels with the aim of acquiring knowledge in sponge phylogeography and biodiversity in combination with applications for pharmaceutical industry. The primary plans for the project are:
- Elucidate structure in demosponge higher taxa relationships.
- Unravel phylogenetic relationships of a demosponge group that lacks suitable morphological characters.
- Investigate patterns of dispersal and biogeography.
- Elucidating taxonomic distribution and biosynthetic pathways of bioactive metabolites to display potential pharmaceutical applications.
The “keratose” sponges are a taxonomically difficult group of sponges. They are demosponges without a silica skeleton but bear a structure of organic (spongin) material. The commonly known “bath sponge” Spongia officinalis belongs to this important group and is the nominal archaetype of all Porifera. Besides this “classical” sponge function, several keratose sponges have recently received attention for their bioactive secondary compounds.
As the detection of new morphological characters in keratose sponges has neared its limit and chemotaxonomy suffers from sampling bias and interpretation ambiguities, molecular systematics is the most promising tool to unravel phylogenies. Molecular techniques have the advantage of providing a substantial number of characters and, in combination with likelihood based statistical methods, are better understood in their evolution and interpretation than morphological data.
The partnership
Dirk is experienced in creating molecular data sets and analysing phylogenetic patterns, and in particular with an extended background in metazoan (animal) molecular phylogeny and particularly its application in sponges. The aim of the project is to combine this familiarity with acquiring robust taxonomic knowledge of keratose demosponges and obtaining expertise in assessment and statistical evaluation of phylogeography and biodiversity for which the host team at the Queensland Museum are well-recognized experts. John Hooper is currently Head of the Biodiversity Program, Queensland Museum, director of the Queensland Centre for Biodiversity, and is among the most recognized sponge taxonomists and the expert for sponges and their biodiversity in the region.
The Indo-West Pacific is a hotspot for sponges in general and many of the keratose sponge taxa are distributed in this area. The Queensland Museum in Brisbane harbours one of the largest collections of Indo-West Pacific sponges. They have performed numerous exhaustive collecting surveys, resulting in a large collection of keratose sponges suitable for molecular research.
Dirk will return in Europe to the Department of Geobiology of the Geoscience Centre of the University of Göttingen in Germany. He will work in the recently formed group of Prof. Gert Wörheide, who spent many years researching in Queensland. The group focuses on, and has a track record in, the biodiversity, phylogeography and palaeobiodiversity of marine invertebrates (www.geobiology.eu).
The results of the project will be published and presented on international conferences and workshops.
Source: Dirk Erpenbeck
