Jeremy Florian Michel Courtin

Education

15/01/2019 – 18/04/2023

PhD in Genetics – Faculty of Science, University of Potsdam, Germany

Title: Biodiversity changes in Siberia between Quaternary glacial and interglacial stages - Exploring the potential of sedaDNA

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Herzschuh Ulrike; Dr. Stoof-Leichsenring Kathleen

10/09/2016 – 26/09/2018

Master’s in behavioral Ecology, Evolution & Biodiversity – University of Tours, France
Title: Exploring novel thermophilic bacteriophages from Icelandic hot springs and their host communities
Supervisor: Guðmundsdóttir Elísabet Eik

09/09/2013 – 31/05/2016

Bachelor’s in Integrative and Evolutive Biology – University of Tours, France

Research Experience

01/11/2023 – 01/11/2025

Post-doctoral project: As part of the Inge Lehmann grant awarded to Dr. H. Zimmermann, I am currently working on the "Functional Ecosystem Changes in the Marine Arctic: Unraveling Climate-Biota Interactions by Hybridization Capture of Sedimentary Ancient DNA" (FunCap) project. I investigate climate-biota interactions using hybridization capture of sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA). Employed at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) in Copenhagen, I am developing a set of probes to capture key marine eukaryotes. These baits are first being tested on modern samples to assess their efficiency and will later be applied to ancient sediment from the Holocene in Baffin Bay (West Greenland). To enhance current species assignment methods and phylogenetic analyses, I will conduct a research visit with Rasmus Nielsen's group at UC Berkeley.

Keywords: Paleoecology; Holocene; High latitude systems; marine ecosystems; Greenland; sedimentary ancient DNA; hybridisation target capture; Bioinformatics (e.g. chiime2, gargammel)

15/01/2019 – 18/04/2023

PhD project: As part of the ERC Glacial Legacy grant awarded to Prof. U. Herzschuh at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Germany, I reconstructed ancient ecosystems using sedaDNA and highlighted plant diversity loss alongside megafaunal extinction and the collapse of the Pleistocene steppe-tundra due to reduced biotic resilience. I explored the potential of sedaDNA to complement or replace traditional methods, such as macrofossil and pollen analysis, to study past ecological changes in response to climate change.

Keywords: Paleoecology; Pleistocene; Holocene; High latitude systems; Siberia, sedimentary ancient DNA; Arctic expedition; metabarcoding; metagenomics; vegetation change; extinction; Bioinformatics (e.g. OBITools, kraken2)

08/01/2018 – 06/07/2018

Master project: As part of the EU’s Horizon 2020-funded project Virus-X, I worked at Matís in Iceland to investigate the genetic diversity of bacteriophages in thermophilic microbial communities from Icelandic hot springs. Through metagenomic sequencing, I identified a potentially novel phage. I also explored microbial diversity using 16S rRNA metabarcoding and reported the isolation of a new Thermus igniterrae strain, finding that pH and temperature had no direct effect on microbial diversity in the samples investigated.

Keywords: Biotechnology; Microbiology; Molecular Biology; DNA extraction; PCR amplification; Field work; DNA Sequencing – full genome & metabarcoding (SANGER; MiSeq); statistical analyses

Field work

03/2019 – 04/2019

Participation in the expedition “Expeditions to Siberia 2019 – Batagay outcrop sampling”, Siberia, Russia

Supervision & teaching experiences

10/2021 – 07/2022

M Sc. Iris Eder “Sedimentary ancient DNA records from the Batagay Megaslump, East Siberia – Vegetation reconstruction over the last ~650,000 years”

2019 – 2022

Master course “Terrestrial Palaeoecology”, University of Potsdam – AWI