About

The BIVALVIANET has been established by researchers with expertise on several scientific disciplines including physiology, molecular biology, conservation and management of marine resources, epidemiology, marine pollution, climatology and oceanography. In the context of climate change, the BIVALVIANET will develop multidisciplinary research in order to understand how changes in environmental conditions, including pathogens, translate into physiological responses (from molecules to whole organism) of economically important edible bivalve species distributed in several Greek coastal areas and they are harvested either from farmed or wild populations. One of the many advantages of a multidisciplinary approach is that it opens communication between complementary scientific fields and fills knowledge gaps, thus facilitating progression, both within individual fields and the broader field of climate change research. The latter will contribute to the identification of “hot spots”: marine areas along the Greek coastlines at risk due to climate change. The main objectives of BIVALVIANET are:

To assess the current status and risk of the coastal areas through analysis of existing and newly-collected data, as well as model simulations.
To design and perform laboratory and field research meant to unravel molecular and biochemical mechanisms associated with physiological constrains in bivalve species living under the current and predicted future synergistic effects of stressful environmental conditions.
To analyze oceanographic and climatological data over the last 50 years at a regional scale, and to simulate future projections of climate change in marine areas with intensive activities associated with bivalve farming and harvesting.

To correlate physiological and immunological responses with oceanographic and climatological parameters, in order to predict possible future impacts of climate change on mussel farming on a regional scale.
To build links between stakeholders in order to evaluate the socio-economic impacts of climate change on bivalve farming.
To develop and apply metagenomic analysis identifying marine areas with high risk of pathogen infestation and risk to public health.
To help improve communication between policymakers and scientists so that the new policies are based on current findings and the scientific studies are widened to include the most policy-relevant questions.

The above objectives are grouped into three main goals, which concern: (a) research (b) risk assessment and (c) risk management.