Théo EYCHENNE
Bio
Théo holds a double master’s degree in Agronomic Engineering and in Biology, Ecology and Evolution from L’Institut Agro Montpellier and the University of Montpellier. This training has provided him with a strong transdisciplinary foundation and a holistic perspective that he aims to apply to the study of marine ecosystems. His previous research spans a variety of topics in marine and coastal ecology, including the study of the trophic biology of Coryphaena hippurus in French Polynesia in collaboration with local fishers, assessments of motorboat noise impacts on coral reef fish communities, and research on fish recruitment and the physiological effects of salinity shock in coral reef fishes in the tropical ecosystem of Taiaro Atoll.
MESCAL research activities
His doctoral research aims to combine local and scientific knowledge to achieve a biocultural approach to the conservation of marine ecosystems in the context of climate change, the ecological crisis and local realities within the transboundary Kenya–Tanzania seascape. His PhD is supported by a MITI-GDR OMER fellowship, which supports this pluridisciplinary project investigating advanced sociological and ecological methods to identify how marine conservation and fisheries governance can be designed for highly connected and seasonally changing socio-ecosystems, where static MPAs (current, future, formal and informal) intersect with the movements of marine resources and people across borders. It will document and spatialize how resident and migrant fishers perceive, use, and value marine environments across seasons and borders. It will then assess, using eDNA metabarcoding, how fish biodiversity, functional structure, and climate sensitivity vary across bioculturally valued areas, MPAs vs non-MPAs, seasons, and environmental gradients. Finally, it will test how conservation scenarios perform socially and ecologically when they explicitly account for seasonal mobility and context-based transboundary values and uses through socio-ecosystem modeling.