Vincent M.P. Bouchet, PhD

I started my research career in Charente-Maritime in western France, actually in La Rochelle, the city where the father of Foraminiferal studies, Alcide d'Orbigny, lived. I worked there on the impact of oyster cultures on living benthic foraminifera and macrofauna. I did my PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr. Pierre-Guy Sauriau and Pr Jean-Pierre Debenay.

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I then moved to Oslo, Norway, in August 2008 where I got a post-doctoral fellowship with Pr Elisabeth Alve. I worked on living and fossil foraminifera from southeastern Norwegian fjords.

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In September 2012, I got an Associate-Professor position at University Lille 1 (Northern France) at the Laboratory of Oceanology and Geosciences hosted in the Marine Station of Wimereux.

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Since 2019, I am the head of the National Observation Network of benthic macro-invertebrates (SNO BenthOBS) funded by the INSU-CNRS and Ifremer.

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Since 2022, I am the head of the research group INTEREST (ecology of INTERtidal and ESTurarine ecosystems).

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In this context, the research projects I am involved in aimed at answering the following questions:

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·    What are the drivers of foraminiferal communities in naturally variable ecosystems and under anthropogenic pressures in transitional waters like estuaries and intertidal mudflats? 

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·    How can the knowledge gain on the living fauna be transferred and apply to recent (last century) fossil fauna in order to reconstruct past environments? This aspect has strong implications in terms of defining accurate reference conditions from pre-impacted times.

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·    Can benthic foraminifera be reliable indicators in the context of the implementation of marine legislations, i.e.European Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategic Framework Directive? This includes the development of indices based on benthic foraminifera and direct comparison with benthic macrofauna to evaluate ecological quality status (EcoQS) and palaeocological-EcoQS. 

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·    What are the ecological functions of foraminifera and the faunal/biogeochemical processes they contribute to? Specifically, how are their involved in bioturbation and bio-irrigation of intertidal sediments?