Nussaibah Raja Schoob
Nussaibah Raja Schoob
Nussaibah Raja Schoob
Research interests
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CoralTrace – A new approach to understanding climate-induced reef crises
(Third Party Funds Group – Sub project)
Overall project: FOR 2332: Temperature-related stresses as a unifying principle in ancient extinctions (TERSANE)
Term: 1. October 2019 - 30. September 2022
Funding source: DFG / Forschergruppe (FOR)Coral reefs are perhaps the most threatened marine ecosystems from current climate-related stressors (CRS). The modern reef crisis manifests itself in an increased frequency of mass-bleaching, reduced calcification rates of corals, and elevated coral mortalities. Although extinction risk is also high among reef-building corals, reef decline is driven by reduced net calcium carbonate production of existing species, rather than extirpation or extinction. Nevertheless, extinctions are a major concern, because these are irreversible and thus preventing the recovery of reefs from CRS-driven crises.Using the Paleobiology Database and the Erlangen PaleoReefs Database together with a new fossil trait database on extinct reef builders, this project aims to reveal the interplay of individualistic evolutionary fate and whole ecosystem changes in reefs over time. Specifically, we test three main hypotheses: (1) Reefs are more sensitive to CRS than reef building species. A global reef crisis can occur without mass extinction, simply because the net calcium carbonate production is reduced. An important implication of this hypothesis is that reef crisis may be an early warning sign of a forthcoming biodiversity crisis. (2) Both the reef-building capacity and the extinction risk of reef building taxa can be predicted from their traits. Although not all potentially relevant life-history traits can be derived from fossils (e.g., nature of photosymbionts), preservable traits such as growth morphology and habitat breadth have been shown to be correlated with coral extinction risk and reef growth today. (3) Mesophotic and mid-latitude environments are suitable environments for reefal refugia and recovery after climate induced crises.Hypothesis testing will be performed in a multivariate statistical framework and machine learning focussing on preserved reefal volume and extinction as dependent variables. Independent variables such as magnitude and duration of warming, anoxia and acidification will be taken from published sources and accompanying TERSANE projects. Tests will be conducted at the level of specific time slices (end-Permian, end-Triassic, early Jurassic) as well as in a time-series context. To be feasible and relevant to TERSANE’s goals, CoralTrace will focus on Permian to Neogene reef systems.
Journal Articles
Spatial-temporal analysis of precipitation characteristics in Artvin, Turkey
In: Theoretical and Applied Climatology (2020)
ISSN: 0177-798X
DOI: 10.1007/s00704-020-03346-6
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A reconstruction of Turkey's potential natural vegetation using climate indicators
In: Journal of Forestry Research 30 (2019), p. 2199-2211
ISSN: 1007-662X
DOI: 10.1007/s11676-018-0855-7
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Addressing priority questions of conservation science with palaeontological data
In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 374 (2019), p. 20190222
ISSN: 0962-8436
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0222
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Trend analysis of annual precipitation of Mauritius for the period 1981–2010
In: Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics 131 (2019), p. 789-805
ISSN: 0177-7971
DOI: 10.1007/s00703-018-0604-7
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Regionalization of precipitation in Mauritius: a statistical approach
In: Meteorological Applications (2019)
ISSN: 1350-4827
DOI: 10.1002/met.1798
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Conference Contributions
ImageJ and 3D Slicer : open source 2 / 3D morphometric software
Annual Meeting of the Paleontological Society (Paläontologische Gesellschaft) 2019 (Munich, 15. September 2019 - 18. September 2019)
In: Open Data and Analysis: from morphology to evolutionary patterns 2019
DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.27998
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How does Citizen Science matter for policy? Analyzing the impact of citizen science in policy making
iDiv Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig, 29. August 2019 - 30. August 2019)
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3405334
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Revisiting the long-term biodiversity dynamics of reef builders in a novel Bayesian framework
13th International Symposium on Fossil Cnidaria (Modena, 3. September 2019 - 6. September 2019)
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Origination and dispersal dynamics of Cenozoic marine plankton
Annual Meeting of the Paleontological Society (Paläontologische Gesellschaft) 2019 (Munich, 15. September 2019 - 18. September 2019)
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