The Mediterranean Institute of marine and terrestrial Biodiversity and Ecology is a research unit. In January 2018, Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Marine and Continental Ecology gather 175 permanent members, 58 PhD Students and more than 30 contract members. The UMR IMBE is spread between 6 main locations in Marseille, Aix en Provence and Avignon. IMBE also has the Nouméa site in New Caledonia and Le Lamentin site in Martinique; and manages the Oak Observatory (O3HP) on the CNRS site at St-Michel l’Observatoire (Haute-Provence). With more than 280 environmental research professionals, IMBE supports strong expertise in the fields of biodiversity, evolution, ecology, paleoecology, health-environment relationships and human-environment relationships (global ecology).
SEAMoBB is coordinated by Dr. Anne Chenuil from the IMBE (CNRS partner). IMBE previously led the project DEVOTES (Development of innovative tools for understanding marine biodiversity and assessing good environmental status) and has expertise with the use of genetic tools (metabarcoding, population genetics) for connectivity inference as well as with field surveys based on ARMS, ASUs, benthos scraping, etc… IMBE has extensive and internationally-recognized experience with bioinformatics, Mediterranean hard bottom ecology, biodiversity conservation and management.