University of Gothenburg
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Matthias Obst

Researcher

Department of Marine Sciences
Telephone
+46 766-18 38 27
Mail
matthias.obst@marine.gu.se
Fax
+46 31-41 67 29
Visiting address
Medicinaregatan 7B
413 90 Göteborg
Room number
4183

About Matthias Obst

Research

Marine ecosystems provide a large amount of essential goods and services to our society and the quality of these products often directly depends on the biological diversity in these environments. Today, impacts from overexploitation and pollution of marine habitats as well as climate change cause substantial loss of biodiversity, reaching levels only comparable to the five major mass extinctions in Earth’s history. In my research I am establishing and testing harmonized and automated observation systems for biological diversity in the sea, spanning from molecular sensors (i.e. genomic observatories) to human sensors (i.e. citizen science). I am also developing methods and infrastructures that capture and integrate such data to enable inter-disciplinary research for the protection and management of our biological resources in the ocean.

Expertise

marine and benthic ecology, marine conservation biology, invertebrate phylogeny and systematics, marine phylogeography, molecular taxonomy, metabarcoding, phylogenomics, metagenomics, e-science, zoomorphology, ecological niche modeling

Projects and program initiatives

I have currently active roles in numerous European infrastructure projects (www.envriplus.eu, www.embos.eu) as well as ESFRI program initiatives (www.lifewatch.eu)

I am currently consortium chair of the Swedish LifeWatch initiative (http://swedishlifewatch.se/)

I am member of the The Linnaeus Centre for Marine Evolutionary Biology (cemeb.science.gu.se)