Emmanuel Emboulé
Intern
Laboratory for Research in Complex Systems
Education
Université des Antilles (Biology of Organisms and Ecosystems)
Research Interests
Symbiosis is defined as the living together of different organisms. It is ubiquitous in nature. Among the many forms of symbiosis, mutualism is the type of association where both partners benefit from the association. It is a form cooperation between species and is now recognized as a driving force of evolution. One important benefit that organisms often gain from mutualism is nutrition. There are well studied nutritional symbiosis such as the heterotrophic (e.g. rumen, termite, pea aphid) and photosynthetic (e.g. coral, green hydra) symbioses. Chemosynthetic symbioses however, even while being ubiquitous and evolutionarily relevant, have received far less attention and their research been hampered by the lack of model systems. We are therefore focusing our effort on the establishment of two chemosynthetic symbiosis models systems.