From bacteria to whales, this is how the Villum Center for Ocean Life itself describes their range within the scientific approach they launched with the center in 2012. In 2024 it ends. We drawa portrait of the marine research centre, which has focused its attention on the big lines instead of the individual species when looking at life in the sea.
As we soon enter the new year, we also enter the last year for DTU Aqua's center of excellence Ocean Life – a marine research center that has distinguished itself by turning biology's classic focus on different species and focusing on the broad commonalities across marine species.
Center for Ocean Life has just entered its 12th and final year. In September 2024, Ocean Life turns 12 years old and resigns at the same time, as the grant from the Villum Foundation expires.
What has come out of a decade of focusing on the broad lines of marine research? What does the research in the center, which quite simply calls itself 'Ocean Life', focus on? In this article, we will shed light on this when we talk to Ocean Life's two founders and draw the broad outlines of the research center's own history and special research approach to life in the oceans.
From bacteria to whales
In the scientific article Characteristic Sizes of Life in the Oceans, from Bacteria to Whales, printed in the Annual Review of Marine Science in 2016, Professor and one of Ocean Life's two leaders, Ken Haste Andersen, together with a number of researchers at the center, describe what the center's special scientific approach to marine research is all about.
The headline 'from bacteria to whales' illustrates how, for example, 'size' is a biological characteristic that describes the most significant differences in marine life across species.
"When we here at Ocean Life look across species and e.g. on this trait 'size', we ask: How many fish end up being small? And how many fish end up being big? We try to make those descriptions so that they are broader, so that they have greater generality," says Ken Haste Andersen.
This way of asking research questions within biology stands in contrast to classical biological science, says Thomas Kiørboe, Professor and the other one of the two leaders of Ocean Life:
"You can say that biologists are trained to distinguish species from one another, cf. Linné. They describe species and subspecies and sub-subspecies, etc. In that perspective, the relevant question is always: How are they different?"
"We here at Ocean Life turn the question around and ask: How are they the same?" says Thomas Kiørboe.
The global perspective
The way they work with biology in Ocean Life, where they throw away the details, ignore species and populations and look at generalities, is called a 'trait based approach'. So what do you get out of it?
"The advantage is that by explaining general features, you can more easily describe life in the sea on a global level," says Ken Haste Andersen and elaborates:
"If you take the traditional approach, you look at one ecosystem at a time, the North Sea or whatever, but that makes it difficult if you want to say something general about how the ocean looks all over the world - how will the global ecosystems handle climate change, for example?
This is the type of broad question we have especially worked with here at the center, the global perspective," says Ken Haste Andersen.
Small water sample with big answer
Thomas Kiørboe complements Ken Haste Andersen, pointing to a board of life cycles that hangs on the wall in the office:
"There we have a life history for viruses, bacteria and single-celled organisms. We have multicellular organisms over here. Both groups get bigger and bigger later in life. But what we also see here is that in unicellular organisms, their size variation is as great as the size variation in multicellular organisms! You might not think so."
To give an example of how the theoretical upscaling points to common features between large and small individuals, which can say something about life in the sea, Thomas Kiørboe tells about how he takes students out to sea, where they have to take a water sample in 10 ml.:
"Then I ask them to estimate, based on the small organisms they find in the sample, how many fish we will catch when we later set the trawl out. The funny thing is that we actually manage to estimate quite well every year when we later look at what we have caught in the trawl," says Thomas Kiørboe.
The water sample method was launched by Sheldon in the 70s. It is precisely a kind of size-based model that does not deal with species either, but only with some very simple principles for how organisms interact with each other. In short, this is the water sample that Ocean Life has further developed - the principle that is used to a large extent.
The models - state of the art
The water sample is a good picture of how the Ocean Life researchers in their mathematical models, so to speak, create another common denominator for life in the sea.
At Ocean Life, they don't say anything about whether they find cod or herring. They have boiled it down to describe something much less complex than different fish species, and this means, according to the researchers, that they can in turn say something very robust about how many fish there are in the ocean's various ecosystems.
Precisely the methodological approach, the models, are the most important contribution Ocean Life has made to marine research, the researchers agree.
Usually, the models biologists use have not been designed to interact. But in Ocean Life they have worked to integrate models, to make them interact.
See the article Havets Ökologi på Formel, which Thomas Kiørboe wrote for the Carlsberg Foundation's annual report. The article briefly explains whether it is possible to make useful predictions about the complicated interaction between ocean ecosystems and the global climate using simple models.
"With the traditional models, you cannot take a description for e.g. species in the North Sea and transfer the results to e.g. Biscay, because there are so many other species here. But our models are based on a mechanistic understanding – that is, understanding what the mechanism is, in the ecosystem, for the various individuals, how they forage, for example. That way you can build models that are much more robust, of course also simplified, but very good at saying something overarching and in general terms about life in the sea," says Ken Haste Andersen.
"No one else makes this type of models in Denmark, nor do so many groups around the world work the way we do. Those that do, they typically only work with the group of single-celled organisms. So here we are state of the art – it's unique," says Thomas Kiørboe.
A unique interdisciplinary marine research centre
When Ken Haste Andersen and Thomas Kiørboe formed Ocean Life in 2012 with funds from the Villum Foundation, it was quite controversial in biologist circles to look at life in that way - on traits, the broad perspective, and ignore specific species.
But in physics circles, you use exactly that approach, where it's about simplifying things, says Ken Haste Andersen, who himself came into ocean research with a background as a physicist.
When they at Ocean Life found reason to transcend the concept of species and start looking more generally and broadly at marine life, it was because the researchers did not think that the existing models could describe the crisis trends in the global marine environment – the ocean has long clearly been threatened.
So Ocean Life is fundamentally based on interdisciplinary collaboration both in relation to the way you do laboratory experiments, the way you analyze data and the way you develop models.
See the Center for Ocean Life's publications
Ocean Life is a Center of Excellence and focuses on basic research. And the center has been productive. In the ten past years, the researchers have published more than 450 articles and helped to educate as many as 38 Ph.D. and had 24 postdocs through the center. So, Ocean Life can be said to have helped to shape some of the strong interdisciplinary researchers of the future.
Ken Haste Andersen and Thomas Kiørboe also emphasize that the center has a diversity of nationalities and that the gender distribution at Ocean Life is close to equal.
The cycle is closed
Although Ocean Life has a grant to continue until September 2024, the cycle was officially closed in August this year.
The sixth edition of the international workshop, 'Trait-based approaches to Ocean Life', was held here in Copenhagen. After the workshop has been in the USA twice, in Norway once, and in England once, it was held this time in Copenhagen at the Science Society - exactly like the workshop that kicked-started Ocean Life 12 years ago.
Ocean Life has created a unique methodological approach to describing life in the sea. Now we will further develop and apply the method to describe climate change in the ocean.
"Few people are aware that marine life is a central part of the regulation of our global climate. Half of the CO2 captured by photosynthesis occurs in the ocean. And the 'biological pump', where dead animals and particles sink into the deep sea, pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere. How will the biological pump work in the future? Today we don't know," concludes Ken Haste Andersen.
Illustration of life cycle/Centre for Ocean Life, DTU Aqua
- Since its inception in 2012, the Center for Ocean Life has until 2023:
- Published 414 magazine articles and 464 publications. That is on average 40 peer reviewed per year.
- Started 65 projects
- Trained 38 PhDs
- Employed 24 postdocs
- Achieved an almost equal gender distribution
- Had many different nationalities attached, including from Denmark, France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, India, Argentina, Switzerland, Finland, Iran and others.