SPACETIME: Simulating Palaeoconnectivity and Evolutionary Trends Impacting the Marine Environment

Population structure in marine ecosystems is set by historical gene flow, often driven by larval dispersal through ocean currents. While state-of-the-art larval dispersal models contribute to our understanding of contemporary gene flow and population dynamics, they are limited by their failure to incorporate past connectivity, reducing our ability to understand population structure and assess models against palaeoecological data. The interdisciplinary SPACETIME project will address these major knowledge gaps by (i) quantifying palaeoconnectivity among all major coral reef systems since the Last Glacial Maximum, and (ii) advancing predictive ecological and genetic models for coral reef taxa by incorporating palaeoconnectivity and assessing model performance against the geological archive. SPACETIME will achieve these objectives through an ensemble of coupled hydrodynamic and biophysical simulations under past environmental conditions over the past 26,000 years, hindcasting the effects of changing climate and bathymetry on the physical oceanographic environment at a scale relevant to larval dispersal. The resulting palaeoconnectivity data will then be integrated into dynamical metacommunity and genetic models, which will be used to investigate the role of palaeoconnectivity in deglacial reef dynamics and population structure. Through these diverse simulations, and a comprehensive assessment against past and present genetic, ecological & oceanographic data, SPACETIME will generate valuable connectivity data for ecologists and evolutionary biologists to aid hypothesis generation and testing. The project directly supports impacts 21, 27 & 28 of the Horizon Europe 2025-2027 Key Strategic Orientation by improving models guiding biodiversity conservation activities. Finally, the training programme will train me in population genetics, model-data integration, and project management & supervision, supporting my development as a leader in interdisciplinary marine science.