Dr. Sonja Reich
Seagrass molluscs as palaeoenvironmental indicators: ESR Sonja Reich defends her PhD thesis with success.
On the 24th of June Sonja Reich had her public thesis defence at the Utrecht University. She is the second ESR to complete her PhD thesis. Sonja's work is about molluscs associated to seagrass habitats. Such habitats are critical in the functioning of coastal ecosystems and currently under pressure. Since seagrasses themselves fossilize rarely but the accompanying mollusc faunas do, it appears they form a good model group to study the timing and context of diversification of shallow marine biota in SE Asia. Sonja explored several ways to characterize and identify seagrass faunas, including trophic composition, geochemistry and taxonomic composition of faunas. Diversity in the seagrass habitats was already very high at the Early Miocene in the region.
Congratulations to Emanuela Di Martino who became the first of the Throughflow Early Stage Researchers to be awarded her doctorate when she successfully defended her thesis on 'Cenozoic bryozoans from Borneo' at Utrecht University on 26 February 2014. In front of a public audience including members of her family from Sicily and several Throughflow researchers, Emanuela was questioned by six examiners for exactly forty-five minutes before the procter entered the hall, banged her staff on the ground and declared the examination over. After a short deliberation, the chairman of the examination board returned to announce the good news and the celebrations began. A formal reception at the university was followed by a wonderful buffet dinner at, appropriately, an Indonesian restaurant, enlivened by a special quiz devised for Emanuela by Nadia Santodomingo. The prize? A MacBook.
