Bioturbation and its ecological consequences: Different functional groups of macrobenthic organisms have been highlighted according to their reworking activities. This has an impact on the distribution of microbial communities and chemical compounds in the sediments. We thus develop models which permit to describe the reworking behaviour of a macrobenthic community. We aim to couple this kind of models with microbial ones in order to be able to quantify the interactions between living organisms and chemical compounds (oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, …) in the marine sediments.

Bacterial growth in the marine sediments: In parallel, we develop mathematical models which describe the coupling between bacterial communities and the nitrogen cycle in the sediments. These models will be forced by the bioturbation model in order to quantify the effects of RedOx oscillations on the nitrogen cycle in the marine sediments.

Bacterial growth in the column water: Models coupling the microbial metabolisms with the organic matter in the column water are developed. They allow a best quantification of the organic matter degradation speed for instance.

Phytoplankton growth: We study models describing the effects of environment fluctuations, like impact of turbulence on phytoplankton growth. This study aims to provide some hypothesis to explain the paradox of plankton.

Trophic webs and microbial loop: We develop mathematical methods which permit to simplify complex food webs models. We aim to quantify the matter fluxes in these systems and to analyse the complex dynamics exhibited by this kind of models.