Carles Pelejero

Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC - ICM)

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Born in Barcelona in 1968, Carles Pelejero graduated in Chemistry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1991, with a speciality in Organic Chemistry. He obtained his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Barcelona in 2000, doing research in the fields of paleoceanography and paleoclimatology through the study of molecular biomarkers in deep sea sediments. He then spent four years of postdoctoral research in Australia, at the Australian National University and Geoscience Australia. There, he developed new methodologies for the elemental and isotopic analysis of marine biogenic carbonates using MC-ICPMS and TIMS. In 2005 he moved to the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC), in Barcelona, with a "Ramón y Cajal" contract. In October 2006 he was appointed ICREA Research Professor.


Research interests

I am interested in understanding and quantifying how the marine environment and climate are changing today, in which ways they have changed in the past, and how will they influence marine organisms and ecosystems in the future. To this end, I analyse deep sea sediments and corals as archives of changes in the past, use systems to monitor the present, and run manipulative experiments in aquaria to simulate the future. A main environmental issue that I am currently studying is the progressive acidification of the oceans that is occurring due to the marine absorption of part of the CO2 that humans are emitting to the atmosphere. I am also setting up culture-based systems to calibrate paleoceanographic proxies in corals, making use of the aquaria facilities at the ICM.

Selected publications

– Isari S, Zervoudaki S, Peters J, Papantoniou G, Pelejero C & Saiz E 2016, ‘Lack of evidence for elevated CO2-induced bottom-up effects on marine copepods: A dinoflagellate-calanoid prey-predator pair’, ICES J. Mar. Sci. 73, 650-658.

– Sala MM, Aparicio FL, Balagué V, Boras JA, Borrull E, Cardelús C, Cros L, Gomes A, López-Sanz A, Malits A, Martínez RA, Mestre M, Movilla J, Sarmento H, Vázquez-Domínguez E, Vaqué D, Pinhassi J, Calbet A, Calvo E, Gasol JM, Pelejero C & Marrasé C 2016, ‘Contrasting effects of ocean acidification on the microbial food web under different trophic conditions’, ICES J. Mar. Sci. 73, 670-679.

– Bunse C, Lundin D, Karlsson CMG, Akram N, Vila-Costa M, Palovaara J, Svensson L, Holmfeldt K, González JM, Calvo E, Pelejero C, Marrasé C, Dopson M, Gasol JM & Pinhassi J 2016, ‘Response of marine bacterioplankton pH homeostasis gene expression to elevated CO2‘, Nat. Clim. Change, 6, 483-487.

– Marañón E, Balch WM, Cermeño P, González N, Sobrino C, Fernández A, Huete-Ortega M, López-Sandoval DC, Delgado M, Estrada M, Álvarez M, Fernández-Guallart E & Pelejero C 2016, ‘Coccolithophore calcification is independent of carbonate chemistry in the tropical ocean’, Limnol. Oceanogr. 61, 1345–1357.

– Aparicio FL, Nieto-Cid M, Borrull E, Calvo E, Pelejero C, Sala MM, Pinhassi J, Gasol JM & Marrasé C, 2016, ‘Eutrophication and acidification: do they induce changes in the dissolved organic matter dynamics in the coastal Mediterranean Sea?’, Sci. Total Environ. 563-564, 179-189

– Movilla J, Calvo E, Coma R, Serrano E, López-Sanz A & Pelejero C 2016, ‘Annual response of two Mediterranean azooxanthellate temperate corals to low-pH and high-temperature conditions’, Mar. Biol. 163, 135, doi:10.1007/s00227-016-2908-9.

– Ribes M, Calvo E, Movilla J, Logares R, Coma R & Pelejero C 2016, ‘Restructuring of the sponge microbiome favors tolerance to ocean acidification’, Env. Microbiol. Rep. 8, 536–544.