Ph. D. Student
Dipartimento Infrastrutture di ricerca per le risorse biologiche marine
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Villa Comunale
80121 Naples - Italy
Tel.: +39 333 532 2449
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Director of Studies: Diana Sarno
Internal Supervisors: Leonilde Roselli
External Supervisor: Anke Kremp
Program: Open University, XXV Cycle
Research Interests
Marine and freshwater ecosystems cover 70% of the planet’s surface. Photosynthesis in aquatic environments is a major source of carbon fixation and oxygen production. Phytoplankton performs ~50% of total photosynthesis. It consists of a great diversity of microscopic organisms, adapted to live in suspension and to thrive in aquatic environments. Phytoplankton supports the aquatic trophic web, contributes to the microbial carbon pump and regulates the biogeochemical nutrient cycles.
I am particularly interested in planktonic protist diversity, their survival mechanisms and interactions in an ever-changing environment. Having previous experience in phytoplankton taxonomy and ecology, my current PhD project is entitled: “Investigation of diatom morpho-functional traits through long-term data series analysis and high-frequency imaging.”
At the present, I am working on the implementation of an automated and submersible, microscope and flow-cytometer, the Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB). Mainly, I am occupied with the construction of taxonomic training sets and the development classifiers, for teaching the AI supervised machine learning models. In parallel, I am analysing historical data from MareChiara-LTER phytoplankton time series, focusing on diatom abundances and functional traits. The overall aim is to test hypotheses on diatom morphotypes, derived from the analysis of historical data, using IFCB observations and morphometrical features. By extracting morpho-functional diatom characteristics (size, shape, coloniality) from the past observations and introducing new plankton imaging technologies, we seek to link diatom forms with environmental parameters and better understand plankton community organisation and variability, in the Gulf of Naples.
Publications
Orfanidis, S., Stamatis, N., Parasyri, A., Mente, M. S., Zerveas, S., Pigada, P., ... & Kotzabasis, K. (2019). Solving nuisance cyanobacteria eutrophication through biotechnology. Applied Sciences, 9(12), 2566.
Zerveas, S., Kydonakis, E., Mente, M. S., Daskalakis, V., & Kotzabasis, K. (2021). Hydrogen gas as a central on-off functional switch of reversible metabolic arrest–New perspectives for biotechnological applications. Journal of Biotechnology, 335, 9-18.
Zerveas, S., Mente, M. S., Tsakiri, D., & Kotzabasis, K. (2021). Microalgal photosynthesis induces alkalization of aquatic environment as a result of H+ uptake independently from CO2 concentration–New perspectives for environmental applications. Journal of environmental management, 289, 112546.
Mente, M. S., Houliez, E., Scalco, E., Roselli, L., & Sarno, D. (2025). Annotated IFCB plankton images from the Mediterranean Sea. Scientific Data, 12(1), 1689.
Databases and repositories (ZENODO)
Mente, M.S. & Houliez, E., Scalco, E., Roselli, L., Sarno, D., (2025). Dataset-Open MedPlanktonSet - A dataset of labeled IFCB images from the Mediterranean Sea. Zenodo, 10.5281/zenodo.15471023.
Patent
Zerveas S., Kydonakis E., Mente M.S., Daskalakis V., Kotzabasis, K.: Method of microorganism and product functional maintenance in hydrogen atmosphere, Industrial Property Organization n. 1009935, 2021.
