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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nMicrobes play a pivotal role in the functioning of ecosystems, they act as emerging pathogens, but also as ecosystem engineers, underpinning ecologically and economically valuable processes, such as carbon sequestration and waste processing. They also form discrete ecological units with eukaryotic hosts (holobionts). As nature is under increasing threat from anthropogenic activity, at local and global scales, so too are the microbial communities and functions that underpin every ecosystem. The Ransome lab at Imperial College London is interested in understanding the intricate roles of microbial communities and their hosts, the impact that anthropogenic change is having on their ecosystem services, and how we can harness them to solve environmental problems. We combine multi-omics with field surveys, and field and lab experiments, to answer our research questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Join us!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We are always looking for new lab members to forward our research goals. Get in touch if you are interested in projects focusing on efforts to enhance seagrass<\/strong><\/em> restoration<\/em><\/strong>, understand the response of the coral reef biodiversity<\/em><\/strong> to anthropogenic stress, or highlight the role of viruses in complex ecosystems<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n New \u00a33.7M project to study deep sea reefs, January 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n The lab is excited to announce a new \u00a33.7M NERC funded project that will see us working alongside the University of Plymouth and Plymouth Marine Laboratory to investigate the resilience of Indian Ocean deep sea reefs to climate change. We cannot wait to get started! PDRA position to be advertised later this year. See here<\/strong><\/a> for more information. Image credit: University of Plymouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Article: ARMS as a UK marine biodiversity monitoring tool<\/em>, Jan 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Small organisms comprise the majority of diversity in benthic marine ecosystems, but are inherently difficult to sample. Check out our new paper<\/strong><\/a> that showcases the use of ARMS for assessing benthic biodiversity in the Sussex IFCA Nearshore Trawling Exclusion zone. Congrats to Imperial MSc and BSc students, Mike and Natalie, on the publication of your projects!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Emma presents at the Royal Society, December 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emma presented our work on the drivers of coral reef biodiversity at the Royal Society during a meeting on marine biodiversity loss, fishing, and climate change<\/strong><\/a>. The meeting recognised the role of ocean biodiversity in regulating climate and delivering food security and discussed what is needed for the next IPCC report. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Charlotte joins the lab to study marine fungi, October 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We are excited to have Charlotte joining us for her PhD \u2018Opening the black box on marine fungi: who are they and how are they impacted by anthropogenic change?\u2019,<\/em> funded by the Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London. Charlotte will be co-supervised by Matthew Fisher<\/strong><\/a> and started strong by leading a fungi foray around Silwood!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Amelia returns from UK wide seagrass fieldwork, September 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Amelia has just returned from fieldwork at 8 sites across the UK, from West Scotland to Southwest Cornwall, to collect seagrass samples. These samples will contribute to building a map of the seagrass microbiome and identifying the environmental conditions that support healthy meadows – knowledge that we hope will directly inform practitioners restoring these vital coastal ecosystems. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Luke & Amelia deploy ARMS in Sussex, June 2025<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n PhD students Luke and Amelia have deployed Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures along a pollution gradient in Sussex this month to explore how chronic disturbance is restructuring marine benthic biodiversity and function. This project is in collaboration with Ray Ward (QMUL), Chris Yesson (ZSL) and Leon Barron (ICL) and is supported by the Sussex Kelp Recovery Project. See here<\/strong><\/a> and here<\/strong><\/a> for videos of our deployments!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Balig travels to South Africa to teach bioinformatics, April 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Balig has been to South Africa to deliver a microbial bioinformatics workshop and hackathon, which he co-organised at Stellenbosch University. This was funded by a knowledge exchange grant from ICL in collaboration with the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA). Go Balig! See here<\/strong><\/a> for more information on the course. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Article: Warming drives changes in zooplankton body-size<\/em>, December 2024 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As an early Christmas present our manuscript, Warming alters plankton body-size distributions in a large field experiment<\/em>, was accepted in Communications Biology this month! The paper shows a nonlinear decrease in zooplankton body size with warming and is the first paper to come out of our large warming and chemical experiments in the Silwood Park Mesocosm Facility<\/strong><\/a>. Congrats to the team!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Luke Herring joins the Ransome lab, October 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We are excited to have Luke join us for his PhD ‘Determining the drivers and consequences of shifts in the coral reef cryptobiome<\/em>‘, funded by the Leverhulme Centre for the Holobiont at Imperial College London. Luke will be furthering our FutureReef<\/em> project in collaboration with Marc Dumas, (ICL), Chris Bowler (Institut de Biologie de l\u2019Ecole Normale Superieure) & Susana Carvalho (KAUST).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Amelia Newman joins the Ransome lab, October 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We are excited to have Amelia join the Ransome lab for her PhD \u2018Enhancing seagrass growth and resilience for restoration purposes with microbial manipulations\u2019,<\/em> funded through the SSCP DTP programme<\/strong><\/a> at Imperial College London. We have no doubt Amelia will do great things in collaboration with the Ocean Conservation Trust, Chris Yesson (ZSL) and Mike Sweet (University of Derby). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Article: The metabarcoding bioinformatic bottleneck<\/em>, October 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Check out our new paper here<\/strong><\/a> in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, SimpleMetaPipeline: breaking the bioinformatics bottleneck in metabarcoding<\/em>. This pipeline is a valuable addition to the existing library of bioinformatic pipelines, providing easy and reproducible bioinformatics, including a range of commonly desired clustering and assignment options, such as OTUs and ASVs for the non-expert.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Welcome to our new PDRA, Balig Panossian! September 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ransome lab is very excited to have Balig join us for three years to research the role of viruses in shaping the interactions between the soil microbiome and plant pathogenic fungi. He has just completed a PhD in evolutionary genomics of animal-microbe interactions at Queen Mary University of London and is now part of the Green Microbiome project team, funded by the UREN foundation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Congratulations to Jake on successfully defending his PhD, July 2024<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A huge congratulations to Jake on successfully defending his PhD!! The viva panel, made up of Professor Tom Bell (Director of the Leverhulme Centre of the Holobiont) and Professor Maria Dornelas (University of St Andrews), made for some exciting discussions. Jake has already published two pieces of research from his PhD on the coral reef cryptobiome (see here<\/strong><\/a> and here<\/strong><\/a>), with more coming soon!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Rosie and Margaux head to the European Coral Reef Symposium to share our research, July 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosie and Margaux are headed to the European Coral Reef Symposium in Naples, Italy this month! They will present two talks and a poster on our research, including our most recent findings on the impact of anthropogenic factors on global reef biodiversity and the use of eDNA to monitor reef biodiversity in the Chagos Archipelago. They will also have the chance to finally meet some of our FutureReef<\/em> collaborators face to face!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Article: Decline of a coral reef holobiont community with ocean acidification<\/em>, April 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Congratulations to Jake on the first paper from his PhD, ‘Decline of a distinct coral reef holobiont community with ocean acidification<\/em>‘, which was published in Microbiome<\/em> this week. We investigated the effect of ocean acidification on the bacterial communities and metabolites associated with the cryptobenthic reef community along a CO2 vent site in Papua New Guinea. Read the paper here<\/strong><\/a> and a summary here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n BES-Defra Report Delivering Biodiversity: Priority Actions for Fresh Water<\/em>, March 2024<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n See our new report for Defra (here<\/strong><\/a>) that collates 40 expert views on the priority actions for fresh water to help restore biodiversity. It was fantastic to see the research and policy community come together to reach consensus on such an important issue! See Emma Ransome’s interview on the Radio4 Today Programme here<\/a> (22\/3\/2024 1.22). Coverage in the Times here<\/a> and Independent here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Article: eDNA captures diurnal migratory behaviour of eukaryotes on coral reefs<\/em>, Feb 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Congratulations to Rosie on the first paper from her PhD, published in Environmental DNA this week. Check out the paper here<\/strong><\/a>, which explores the importance of standardising the timing of eDNA sampling due variations in species detections over diurnal cycles on coral reefs. While eDNA is a useful tool for assessing human impacts on biodiversity, greater care needs to be taken to standardise sampling approaches. Image credit: tonaquatic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Invited talk at the inaugural UK Seagrass Symposium, Plymouth, UK, November 2023 <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emma had a fantastic time at the inaugural UK Seagrass Symposium, in Plymouth, where she gave a talk on two projects her team are working on with Ocean Conservation Trust – one on carbon variability in UK seagrass meadows, and the other on the role of microbial probiotics in enhancing seagrass growth in polytunnels. More collaborations coming soon!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n A new grant to suppress Take-all disease with microbial communities! October 2023<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ransome lab is starting a new grant to examine pathogen suppression in wheat through microbiome manipulation! We are very excited to be working with a fantastic team at Imperial College London to investigate the use of natural microbial communities in suppressing an important crop disease, funded by the Micheal Uren Foundation. See more about the project here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Challenger Society for Marine Science commends Aleks, October 2023 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ransome Lab undergraduate student, Aleks Murphy, has won a high commendation from the Challenger Society for Marine Science for her thesis! The National Student Award<\/strong><\/a> competition is run every year and aims to raise the status of marine science education and research. Aleks worked with us to understand the variability in seagrass carbon across seagrass meadows in the UK. Well done, Aleks! <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Yilan Aolei joins us to work on bacteriophage ecology, Sept 2023 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Welcome to Yilan Aolei who has joined the Ransome lab as a Research Assistant. Yilan has just finished her MSc in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at Imperial College London and will be working with us to finish off her thesis work investigating the effect of temperature and chemical pollution on bacteria-phage interactions. Image shows the first phage Yilan imaged by TEM. Exciting times!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Invited talk at the Red Sea Research Center, KAUST, Sept 2023 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A great trip to give an invited talk at the Red Sea Research Center in KAUST<\/strong><\/a>, Saudi Arabia. Emma, Margaux and Jake had a great 10 days working with Professor Susana Carvalho and her team. Great science discussions, more ARMS<\/strong><\/a> recoveries and lab work, and a dip in the Red Sea! More collaborations on the reef cryptobiome coming soon\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Paula wins best Erasmus+ MSc thesis prize, August 2023 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Congratulations to Paula for winning the best Erasmus+<\/strong><\/a> MSc thesis this year! Paula joined the Ransome lab in February to work with us and Ocean Conservation Trust<\/a> to enhance polytunnel seagrass growth for restoration purposes using microbes. Paula developed and ran a large seagrass experiment, with great results and is now heading to the Red Sea Research Center for an internship! Watch this space for Paula\u2019s paper.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Article: Two new publications from our SARS-CoV-2 work, May 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Check out our two new papers, published in Nature Communications and BMJ Open Respiratory Research. These papers investigate the presence of viruses with zoonotic potential in UK bats and the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in the air around London, with varying levels of pollution. Read this work here<\/strong><\/a> and here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Congratulations to Margaux on successfully defending her PhD! April 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Congratulations to Margaux, who just passed her PhD with no corrections! For her PhD, Margaux used Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) to investigate the cryptobenthic community on coral reefs in the Chagos Archipelago \u2013 one of the most remote locations in the Indian Ocean. See her papers from this work here<\/strong><\/a> and here<\/strong><\/a>. Margaux is staying with us as she joins the Ransome lab as a PDRA to work on a new project called the FutureReef<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Article: <\/strong>Evaluating the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2 from sewage<\/strong><\/em>, November 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Check out our new paper, published this week in Science of the Total Environment! We investigated the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2 from sewage pollution in the River Thames, UK, and in the Danube and Sava Rivers, Serbia. We surveyed the rivers for SARS-CoV-2 RNA and infectious SARS-CoV-2 and carried out lab experiments to quantify the degradation rate of infectious SARS-CoV-2 in natural substrates. Read our paper here<\/strong><\/a> to see what we found!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n British Ecological Society Aquatic Group Meeting, University of Oxford, September 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We had some great speakers for our BES Aquatic Group Annual Meeting this year, joining us from the USA, Spain, Germany, and the UK. The ECR talks were awesome and our ECR prize winner, James Orr, from the University of Oxford, gave an excellent talk. I also finally got to meet our new freshwater co-chair, Dr Stephen Thackeray (of CEH), face-to-face for the first time after a million Teams meetings. A fantastic two days! Check out BESAG here <\/strong><\/a>and follow us on Twitter here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Ecology Field Skills Course, Imperial College London in Plymouth, UK<\/strong>, June 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What a fantastic week! We are just back from teaching second year Imperial undergraduate students about all things marine – from rocky shores, to invasive species, and from biogeochemistry to estuaries! My favourite activity was a 5am start to dig for worms and learn about redox on the River Plym. We were greeted with a beautiful sunrise and it stayed dry until we left the beach. Great students, great staff and mostly dry weather! Read a student blog on the course here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Sediment coring in Plymouth seagrass meadows, May 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A successful week of fieldwork in Plymouth Sound coring seagrass sediments to investigate carbon stocks and microbial communities. We perfected our coring methodology after some trials and managed to collect more cores than we had hoped, even with some rough weather. We could not have done it without such a fantastic dive team, led by Mark Parry from Ocean Conservation Trust. A big thanks to Keith Hiscock for documenting the work! You can read more about the work News!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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