Evolution, Development and Ecology of Anemonefishes : Model Organisms for Marine Science

Vincent Laudet has studied for 20 years the role of nuclear hormone receptors and in particular the thyroid hormone receptor in evolution and development using several model organisms such as amphioxus or zebrafish. Between 2015 and 2020 he was director of the marine station of Banyuls-sur-mer in France. There, his group focuses on the evolution of life history strategies, in particular the recruitment of coral reef fish larvae to the reef and the role played by thyroid hormones in triggering and coordinating this process. Since March 2020 he is Professor at OIST (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University) and Research Fellow at Academia Sinica (Taiwan) where his group develops the clownfish Amphiprion ocellaris as a model organism for Eco/Evo/Devo studies. He focuses in particular on the function and the plasticity of the brilliant pigment patterns of these iconic fishes. His team actively collaborate with Tim Ravasi on the genomics and ecology of anemonefishes from the Ryukyu archipelago. Vincent Laudet’s laboratory has contributed to more than 250 scientific papers and 40 reviews (h-index: 78) including two books in molecular endocrinology, molecular evolution and developmental biology.

Timothy Ravasi shown for the first time that climate change stressors such as ocean warming and acidification are able to induce genomics and epigenomics changes in tropical fish, specifically his team was able to: (i) demonstrate for the first time that tropical fish are able to restore their energy metabolism if parent are reared at high water temperature (Transgenerational Acclimation); (ii) identify those molecular pathways underline this Transgenerational Acclimation; (iii) provide the first evidence that selective DNA methylation of specific loci is one of the epigenetics mechanism use by fish to transfer the information of a new environment to the next generation (iv) unveil the for the first time, the molecular mechanisms underline sex change in cowfishes’. Furthermore, his team sequenced the genomes of the orange clownfish Amphiprion percula, the false clownfish Amphiprion ocellaris, the Clark's anemonefish Amphiprion clarkii and the cinnamon clownfish Amphiprion melanopus, which today, are among the most complete fish genomes ever been sequenced. Between 2009 and 2019 he was a Tenured Professor at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. There, his group focuses on developing genomics approaches and protocols to study coral reef fish, their ecology and their responses to climate stressors. Since August 2019 he is a Tenured Professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) and Adjunct Professor at the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, where his group develops the clownfish as a model organism for climate change studies. Timothy Ravasi’s laboratory has contributed to more than 140 scientific papers and 4 book chapters that have been cited more than 25,000 time with an h-index: 58.