WHY: Our research focuses on the (molecular) biodiversity and evolution of primarily marine (coral reef) organisms and their symbionts, and on the evolution of biomineralization. We also investigate the impact of changing environmental conditions on these organisms. Another topic of our interest is deep metazoan phylogeny to understand early animal evolution. WHAT: coral reefs: sponges, corals, echinoderms HOW: transcriptomics, genomics, DNA barcoding, experiments in marine research aquaria