Dr. Guillem Corbera Pascual

Trained in biology and oceanography, I started my scientific career in the study of deep-sea
benthic ecology by means of remoted operated vehicles (ROVs), mainly focused on how
environmental variables and seafloor parameters determine species distribution. With time my
interest in benthic species capable of creating habitats grew and thus, I started to look at the
effect that structuring species can have on the diversity of the surrounding fauna.

During the Ph.D. my research became more specific and multidisciplinary, as I focused on the
study of reef-building cold-water corals. The main aim of my research is to reveal what are the
main environmental drivers and paleo-climatic events that control cold-water coral reef and
mound formation since the Late Quaternary. In this context, a wide range of methods are used
to investigate both the present-day processes and paleo-evolution of these bioconstructions.
These include the analysis of ROV video-transects, aquaria experiments and the analysis of
coral mound deposits by means of Uranium series, geochemical proxies and computed
tomography.

Up to date, I have taken part in 8 research cruises, 5 of them in the Mediterranean Sea and 1 off the Scottish coast, the Galapagos Archipelago and the West Indian Ocean. Most of them were related to the study of CWCs, either by means of ROV dives or gravity coring.