Ambre Soszynski

PhD, OCF Thesis Topic End-to-end ecological modelling of evolutionary dynamics on the West Coast of Canada under exploitation and climate change Supervisor Dr. William Cheung

Degrees

MSc Marine Biodiversity and Conservation
BSc Biology of Organisms and Populations

Research Unit

Changing Oceans Research Unit

Biography

My thesis at the IOF started after a number of years gaining experience both at sea and in the academic world.

After graduating from a BSc in biology and ecology in my hometown in Lyon, France, I studied abroad for my MSc degree. This international program allowed me to study in Portugal (University of Algarve), in Ireland (Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology). The courses offered in this program picked my interest for fisheries issues and management at a large scale, and I decided to do my master’s project on ecological models simulating different harvesting strategies, tackling mainly the fisheries discards issues in the Azores deep-sea ecosystem. The knowledge I acquired in the functioning of food webs, trophic modelling and the inclusion of anthropogenic pressures made me confident that these tools are promising, and that, if applied well, will help resolve environmental and socio-economic issues. Ceasing opportunities to work with international scientists and to intern in a number of institutes allowed me to discover the scientific community and slowly make my way in. In the meantime, my education at sea was done interning for dive guide and security onboard certificates, as well as conducting whale watching tours both in the Azores islands and in Iceland. The opportunity to spend days observing the oceans from above or below, and communicating this knowledge to the public made my respect for these precious threatened ecosystems and organisms grow indefinitely.

Research Interests

My research aims at understanding the functioning of ecosystems and their response to anthropogenic pressures in a changing world. The use of marine ecosystem models (Ecopath with Ecosim, OSMOSE) allows to study the marine environments from the individual to ecosystem levels and to forecast the future of biodiversity under fishing and climate change scenarios. My latest focus has been to include variability in the organisms’ response to environmental changes and their subsequent evolutionary potential, unravelling how crucial phenotypic and genotypic diversity can be for the functioning of natural systems.

Past and present collaborations:

• Strategies for the gradual elimination of discards in European fisheries, http://www.discardless.eu/
• Scenarios of Marine Biodiversity and Evolution under Exploitation and climate change, http://sombee.org/
• Ecopath with Ecosim food web modelling approach, http://ecopath.org/
• Object-oriented Simulator of Marine Ecosystems, http://www.osmose-model.org/object-oriented-simulator-marine-ecosystems

Keywords: ecological modelling; impact assessment; biodiversity; fisheries; climate change; marine ecosystem; marine governance; Ecopath with Ecosim and Ecospace; OSMOSE

Selected Publications

Brito J., Soszynski A., Pham C.K., Giacomello E., Menezes G., Steenbeek J., Chagaris D., Morato T. (2023). Systematic evaluation of a spatially explicit ecosystem model to inform area-based management in the deep-sea, Ocean & Coastal Management, Volume 244, 106807, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2023.106807

Depestele, J., Feekings, J., Reid, D. G., Cook, R., Gascuel, D., Girardin, R., Heath, M., Hernvann, P.-Y., Morato, T., Soszynski, A., & Savina-Rolland, M. (2019). The Impact of Fisheries Discards on Scavengers in the Sea. In The European Landing Obligation. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03308-8_7

Morato, T., Lemey, E., Menezes, G., Pham, C. K., Brito, J., Soszynski, A., Pitcher, T. J., & Heymans, J. J. (2016). Food-web and ecosystem structure of the open-ocean and deep-sea environments of the Azores, NE Atlantic. Frnontiers in Marine Science, Volume 3, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2016.00245

João, M., Soszynski, A., Martins, A., Rauter, A. P., Neng, N. R., Nogueira, J. M. F., Varela, J., Barreira, L., & Custódio, L. (2015). Unravelling the antioxidant potential and the phenolic composition of different anatomical organs of the marine halophyte Limonium algarvense. Industrial Crops and Products, Volume 77, 315–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2015.08.061

Depestele, J., Feekings, J., Reid, D. G., Cook, R., Gascuel, D., Girardin, R., Heath, M., Hernvann, P.-Y., Morato, T., Soszynski, A., & Savina-Rolland, M. (2019). The Impact of Fisheries Discards on Scavengers in the Sea. In The European Landing Obligation. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03308-8_7

Morato, T., Lemey, E., Menezes, G., Pham, C. K., Brito, J., Soszynski, A., Pitcher, T. J., & Heymans, J. J. (2016). Food-web and ecosystem structure of the open-ocean and deep-sea environments of the Azores, NE Atlantic. 3(December), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2016.00245

João, M., Soszynski, A., Martins, A., Rauter, A. P., Neng, N. R., Nogueira, J. M. F., Varela, J., Barreira, L., & Custódio, L. (2015). Unravelling the antioxidant potential and the phenolic composition of different anatomical organs of the marine halophyte Limonium algarvense. 77, 315–322.

ResearchGate:

Ambre Soszynski

Contact Information

Email: a.soszynski@oceans.ubc.ca