Athena Marvel

As part of her Master the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris, Ulm), Athéna undertook a 4-month internship with us. Athéna worked under the supervision of Laure Fontimpe and Marc Besson from the EcoEvoDevo team, and Dr. Raphël Lami from the LBBM, primarily on fish behavioral and chemical ecology (MEGASETE research project). Man-made structures immersed in sea-water are rapidly colonized by microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, microalgae…) and later by macroorganisms (mussel, barnacle, macroalgae…). The community formed by these organisms is called biofouling and is known to attract fish. In this context, Athéna conducted double choice flume tank experiments to assess if AHL (bacterial communication compounds) can affect early life-stage swimming behavior of the two-banded seabream. After recording fish locations in the flume, she then analysed fish behavior using a specific computational workflow: automated landmark tracking using in-house Python algorithm involving deep-learning approaches, to extract various behavioral metrics. Athéna also carried out AHL extraction and identification (UHPLC-HRMS) from sea-water and biofouling samples coming from the fish environment to see if the molecules tested are present in it.

After her internship with us, Athéna pursued her studies with a Master 2 at Sorbonne University.