Date:      Tuesday, 15 Sep 2026
Time:      11am – 12pm
Venue:   SBS CR2 (SBS-01n-22)

Abstract:
The survival of coral reefs depends on the rejuvenation of coral populations with the potential to adapt and survive a changing climate. Assisted sexual reproduction has become an important tool in reef management via reef restoration of damaged sites, with the goal of creating spawning hubs. Such locations, if restored and resilient to ocean warming, could provide larval supply for downstream reefs to recover and adapt. However, one bottleneck is the efficient and manageable induction of coral larval settlement. The recently discovered bacterial compound cycloprodigiosin (CYPRO) acts as a multispecies cue which induces complete larval settlement at rates between 40 and 93% in four brooding and five broadcast spawning coral species. Thus, this broad settlement cue has the chance to advance reef restoration projects.​

Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Peter Schupp
Environmental Biochemistry
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg;
Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), Germany;
Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg (HIFMB)

Biography:
Prof. Dr. Peter Schupp is a Professor at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg and a member of the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, Germany. He earned his PhD in Pharmaceutical Biology from the University of Würzburg in 2000, followed by a postdoc at the University of NSW, Australia. Dr. Schupp previously spent seven years at the University of Guam Marine Laboratory, serving as an Assistant and Associate Professor, and eventually as its Director from 2008 to 2010.

Highly active in marine science policy, Dr. Schupp serves on the German National Committee of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR). He is also a member of the Forum on Future Oceans (ZFO) and represents his university at the German Alliance for Marine Research (DAM), a federally funded agency coordinating and financing major €30-million marine research missions. His research group has been working on the chemical ecology of marine invertebrates and more recently the role of bacteria in coral larvae settlement and possible applications in reef restoration.