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Practical matters How to find us E.M.J. (Ellie) Laetz, PhD

E.M.J. (Ellie) Laetz, PhD

Assistant Professor in Marine Biology, Ecology and Evolution and Veni Laureate
Profielfoto van E.M.J. (Ellie) Laetz, PhD
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E-mail:
e.m.j.laetz rug.nl

Research interests

I am interested in the relationship between marine organisms and their environments. Climate change is disrupting marine ecosystems and some organisms are more vulnerable than others, but we don’t properly understand why. In the Ecophysiology and Evolution of Marine Symbioses Lab, my students and I investigate how environmental stress affects marine animals using an integrative approach and a wide variety of different biological techniques. We focus on animals that form symbiotic relationships with algae, from sea slugs to upside-down jellyfish, sea anemones, and more, to unravel fundamental aspects of the algae-animal symbiosis, explore the tradeoffs associated with symbiosis and predict how these organisms will cope with the warmer, more acidified and deoxygenated oceans of the future. 

Publications

Integrative approaches to understanding organismal responses to aquatic deoxygenation

Kleptoplasts are continuously digested during feeding in the plastid-bearing sea slug Elysia viridis

Statocyst content in Aeolidida (Nudibranchia) is an uninformative character for phylogenetic studies

Comparing amylose production in two solar-powered sea slugs: the sister taxa Elysia timida and E. cornigera (Heterobranchia: Sacoglossa)

How does temperature affect functional kleptoplasty? Comparing populations of the solar-powered sister-species Elysia timida Risso, 1818 and Elysia cornigera Nuttall, 1989 (Gastropoda: Sacoglossa)

Photoprotective non-photochemical quenching does not prevent kleptoplasts from net photoinactivation

Chloroplast digestion and the development of functional kleptoplasty in juvenile Elysia timida (leRisso, 1818) as compared to short-term and non-chloroplast-retaining sacoglossan slugs

Examining the retention of functional kleptoplasts and digestive activity in sacoglossan sea slugs

Photosynthate accumulation in solar-powered sea slugs - starving slugs survive due to accumulated starch reserves

Why it is time to look beyond algal genes in photosynthetic slugs

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Press/media

Featured Scientist by Women in Ocean Science

These slugs cut off their own heads when they want a new body