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
Science projects. I am coordinating various eco-genomic projects in the Swedish eDNA lab
Marine infrastructure. I have currently active roles in numerous marine infrastructure projects (EMBRC, AssemblePlus)
eScience. I am currently consortium chair of the Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure Consortium (SBDI) and coordinate the Nordic network of biodiversity data infrastructures (https://neic.no/affiliate-deepdive/). I am also leading tasks in the EOSC-NORDIC project
Centers. I am steering group member in the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Center
More information
Matthias Obst on LinkedIn
Koster seafloor observatory