Severe shortage in good quality water reserves is a global problem that will increase with a growing world population. Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) will contribute to replenish depleted aquifers and restore ecological services in fresh water ecosystems. However, risks associated to the occurrence of pathogens and anthropogenic emerging pollutants in groundwater have led to question the reuse of reclaimed water for MAR. MARadentro aims to assess and minimize these risks, and to increase the benefits of MAR guaranteeing human health and environment protection through the development of affordable and effective permeable reactive layers. These integrate biotic and abiotic processes to enhance pathogen retention and inactivation and pollutant adsorption and degradation by making available a broad range of sorption sites and a sequence of redox states. The applicability of the proposed MAR layers will be validated by upscaling from lab and pilot experiments to field scale studies. Transport modelling, risk assessment, economic balance and establishment of recommendations to stakeholders and authorities in the water sector will guarantee the smooth implementation of this MAR concept and the positive public response to water reuse. The transfer of the knowledge gathered in MARadentro to policy makers will help in EU regulation on MAR.

At the current warming rate, many organisms should go extinct if they are not able to disperse or adapt locally, which often involves plastic responses. In ectotherms, warming influences plastic life history traits with an acceleration of early life production at the expense of longevity and senescence. This may be due to trade-offs involving warming-induced oxidative stress and telomere shortening. Although pace-of-life acceleration may provide short-term benefits, it also increases sensitivity to limited resources, extreme climate events and unusual nighttime thermal conditions. Thus, in an increasingly warmer climate, ectotherms could reach critical physiological thresholds that would precipitate their decline. To date, physiological mechanisms and ecological consequences of this pace-of-life acceleration are poorly characterized. Here, we will combine experimental, observational and analytical approaches to unlock critical gaps in our understanding of thermal plasticity of life history. We will focus on a bimodal reproductive lizard (Zootoca vivipara), which offers a unique context to analyze how evolutionary transition between oviparity and viviparity influenced pace-of-life acceleration. Using long-term data sets and surveys across climatic gradients, we will document patterns of pace-of-life acceleration in response to climate warming in the two reproductive modes, focusing on vulnerable populations of the warm margin. In addition, we will perform outdoor and laboratory experiments to identify physiological tipping points in the context of day-night asymmetry of warming and extreme climate events. Given their major potential role in this thermal plasticity, non-energetic trade-offs will be quantified using longitudinal and cross-sectional assays of oxidative stress and telomere length dynamics. Altogether, this project will highlight patterns, mechanisms, and consequences on population viability of pace-of-life acceleration in response to climate warming.

The brown macroalgal genus Sargassum, the namesake of the Sargasso Sea, also known as the "golden floating rainforest of the Atlantic Ocean", is an essential habitat and refuge for many organisms including endemic species. However, the holopelagic Sargassum species [S. fluitans and S. natans], which have historically been geographically constrained to the open waters of the Sargasso Sea and Gulf of Mexico, have recently begun forming massive accumulations in the Tropical part of the Atlantic Ocean resulting in unprecedented strandings impacting three continents: the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, Mexico, Caribbean-island nations, northern Brazil and western Africa. There is uncertainty regarding the sources and sinks of Sargassum, and this proposal aims to address the following related key questions: (1) How are Sargassum subpopulations carried and distributed by ocean currents?; (2) How genetically and physiologically variable are the Sargassum species in the Tropical Atlantic Ocean and how does this impact Sargassum bloom dynamics?; (3) Can we combine geomarkers and biomarkers to infer the recent history of Sargassum species’ composition, distribution, and abundance from the sedimentary record?; (4) Are the accumulations of the last decade the result of environmental changes or a natural range expansion of Sargassum spp.?; and, (5) What is the basin-scale connectivity of Sargassum and how has it changed over the last decades? Our international, transcontinental consortium includes interdisciplinary work packages that combine biological modelling, physical oceanography, shipboard and field-oriented physiological experiments combined with laboratory approaches, and a poly-phasic marker approach on current and past Sargassum populations.

Viruses have multiple and globally significant biogeochemical impacts via the metabolic reprogramming and mortality (lysis) of their microbial hosts. Viral lysis modulates food-web dynamics by diverting the living biomass away from higher trophic levels and redirecting it into the microbial loop. This ‘viral shunt’ is one the largest carbon fluxes in the ocean. Viruses also impact nutrient cycling during infection, with the rewiring of host metabolism to support virus production. This reprogramming profoundly alters resource acquisition, carbon and energy metabolisms. Virus research has almost exclusively focused on the study of those that contain DNA genomes. Recently, it has emerged that RNA viruses could account for half of the marine viral communities, yet, we understand very little about their role in ecosystem functioning. BONUS is dedicated to the study of this under-explored component of the biosphere and its biogeochemical impacts on one of the most globally distributed and ecologically successful groups of organisms in the ocean, the diatoms. Diatoms contribute 40% of marine primary production and their silica shells also ballast substantial vertical flux of carbon from the surface to depth. Our 4-year project proposes a thorough study of viral infection of dominant diatom species with contrasting traits (large vs. small-sized) and patterns of occurrence (blooming vs. persistent) to address the hypothesis that infected diatoms are metabolically distinct from uninfected cells and have distinct ecological and biogeochemical fates. To this end, a multidisciplinary team will address four research questions: What are the metabolic functions that respond to viral infection? What is the impact on resource uptake and allocation? What is the fate of infected diatoms? What is the significance of viral infection and metabolic reprogramming in natural diatom populations? This integrative framework should provide novel fundamental mechanistic understanding and direct estimates for assessing the impact of diatom infection on ocean biogeochemistry dynamics. Given the global-scale prominence of RNA viruses and targeted diatom populations, we anticipate that our research will lead to the discovery of important processes that drive the functioning of the ocean.

The purpose of the GAARAnti project is to unravel couplings between deep Earth dynamics and evolutionary processes through an innovative and original multi-disciplinary study combining Earth and Life sciences. This innovative approach will reconcile biological and geological clocks and timeframes through the combined use of radiochronological methods, biostratigraphy and phylogenetic inferences, to constrain the Cenozoic paleo-biogeography of the Antillean arc. The GAARAnti project will generate novel collaborative works between geologists/marine geophysicists and biologists/paleontologists and new results by constraining the pattern, timing, and dynamics of biodiversity in Lesser Antilles at the Cenozoic scale. This will in turn allow untangling biotic and geological constraints that forced such history. In the frame of the ongoing debate about the Tertiary origin of terrestrial organisms of the Greater Antilles, GAARAnti will focus on the role of subduction dynamics onto the evolution of emergent areas as a promoter or an antagonist of the terrestrial faunas dispersal. Altough it is now widely admitted that most components of Antillean terrestrial communities originated from South and Central America, the mechanisms (dispersal vs vicariance) responsible for the observed evolution and its precise timing are still highly debated. Previous studies have mainly addressed this question through Earth sciences or Life sciences separately. We are confident and deeply believe that our innovative and original multi-disciplinary approach within the GAARAnti project will generate major advances in the knowledge of Cenozoic Antillean biodiversity dynamics. To be efficient, the project is organized in five strongly-interconnected scientific tasks and a supplementary management task including annual meetings (Task 0). Task 1 will quantify past emergent areas through Cenozoic times, and to estimate the timing and duration of land emersion periods (amplitude and rate of vertical motions) both being key constraints for paleo-geographic and paleo-environmental reconstructions. Task 2 will estimate divergence times among living, recently extinct, and fossil mammals from the Lesser Antilles. We will then clarify the pattern and timing of mammalian dispersals into the Caribbean and proposing paleo-biogeographic models. Task 3 will refine the knowledge of the poorly known structure of both the Aves Ridge and the Lesser Antilles back-arc domains, i.e. the most probable dispersal pathways. This task is connected to the GARANTI marine cruise project, taking place in May-June 2017 and aiming at acquiring a large dataset of Wide Angle Seismic and Multi-Channel Seismic lines and dredged/cored samples. Onshore-Offshore correlations will be realized to establish paleogeographic reconstructions at the scale of the Eastern Caribbeans. In Task 4, we will perform 2D/3D numerical and analog models of subduction in order to simulate the surface response (topographic variations) to deep processes and to propose a global framework for the geodynamic evolution of the Lesser Antilles arc during the Cenozoic. Task 5 is a central and federative task in the project aiming at 1) establishing palinspastic reconstructions, 2) testing the influence of abiotic (temperature, eustasy, continental domain surfaces) vs biotic variables (species diversity, clade diversity, clade-specific shifts) based on birth-death models and 3) develop new mixed models to test the link between abiotic and biotic variables (to be assembled during the project) and the macro-evolutionary dynamics of studied groups in the Antilles. Beyond the novel expected scientific outcomes, the GAARAnti project will promote the preservation of both the geological and paleontological patrimony of the Antilles, to disseminate the results through local institutions of scientific popularization that are associated to the projects and through collaborations with local primary and high schools and Guadeloupe ESPE.