Jeroen Ingels

As a community ecologist, I have a wide interest in benthic biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and food web ecology of marine ecosystems, with a special focus on the smallest of metazoan organisms - the meiofauna. We conduct research to create a better understanding of the roles of meiofauna in sediments and on hard substrates and advance our knowledge of their biology and ecology. Meiofauna organisms are abundant in all marine ecosystems and play a pivotal role in key processes and functions, but despite their ecological importance, they are often overlooked and many aspects of their biology and ecology are still unknown. Our research projects aim at understanding what drives general benthic and meiofauna diversity and community patterns, and how these may affect marine sediment functions related to important processes such as biogeochemical cycling and food-web flows. Our research is often framed in studies that assess anthropogenic and climate-change impacts.