Christian Wild (biologist)

Hard corals in shallow water. They are known as ecosystem engineers because they perform many symbiotic functions in a reef ecosystem.

Christian Wild (* 1974 ) is a German biologist and geographer. He is a professor at the University of Bremen. Before that he was a professor at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology, ZMT in Bremen .

Life

Wild studied biology and geography at the University of Mainz and the University of Bremen and carried out his doctoral project in the Biogeochemistry Department at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen from 2000 to 2003. He then worked as a consultant on coral reef issues for the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO in Paris. From 2006 to 2010 he was head of an Emmy Noether junior research group at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) . In 2010 he became a professor at the ZMT Bremen.

Research and Teaching

Wild and his group work on the biological, geochemical and physical factors that determine the functioning of recent coral reefs. His research focuses on so-called ecosystem engineers. These are organisms like hard corals that have a decisive influence on the availability of habitats and resources for other living things in the same ecosystem. He conducts comparative studies with various "engineers" and examines interactions between different reef organisms. He also investigates the influence of various stress factors (warming and acidification of water, overfishing, nutrient input, sedimentation) on the services provided by coral reef ecosystems for us humans.

Wild and his working group conduct interdisciplinary field studies at various reef locations in the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean with supplementary laboratory experiments in the seawater facilities at the ZMT. A focus of his investigations are questions about the release and composition of organic material by marine organisms (animals, higher plants, algae, microorganisms). His work follows on from studies that showed that organic substances, v. a. Slimes and sugars can control a number of important processes in the coral reef ecosystem and adjacent habitats.

Wild teaches in the ZMT master’s course and in the biology / chemistry department (FB02) at the University of Bremen.

Fonts

• Sediment-water coupling in permeable shallow water sediments. Peniope, Munich 2004.
• The fascination, importance and endangerment of coral reefs in a time of global change. In: A. Höfer, D. Rath (Ed.): Germany's true superstars - 50 future perspectives for young scientists. Heel, Königswinter 2007, pp. 46–49.
• with C. Jantzen: Master builders of the seas - corals as engineers of hot and cold water reefs. In: U. Moldrzyk, G. Heiss (Ed.): Abgetaucht. Book accompanying the special exhibition on the International Year of the Reef 2008. Museum für Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universität, Berlin 2008, pp. 171–182.
• Co-author: Consequences of climate change for coral reefs - possible solutions. In: U. Moldrzyk, G. Heiss (Ed.): Abgetaucht. Book accompanying the special exhibition on the International Year of the Reef 2008. Museum für Naturkunde der Humboldt University, Berlin 2008, pp. 148–170.
• Co-author: Bleaching and related ecological factors. CRTR working group findings 2004-2009. Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management Program. Brisbane, 2009, p. 128ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.zmt-bremen.de/Korallenriffoekologie.html