Protists

Uncovering the diversity, evolution, and functional roles of the microbial eukaryotes — corallicolids, algae, ciliates, and more — that live within corals and shape holobiont health.

Generating chromosome-scale reference genomes across the eukaryotic tree of life — from protists to corals to fish — to study biodiversity and evolution, as part of the Earth BioGenome Project and its Catalan (CBP) and European (ERGA) nodes.

Studying the coral holobiont as an integrated system — pairing microbiome metabarcoding with host transcriptomics to read how host and microbes vary across space within a colony, across the diel cycle, and across the shift from health to disease.

Characterising the microbial eukaryotes — protists — that live in and on marine animals across the full symbiotic spectrum, from mutualists to parasites, and building the tools to detect them.

Four members of the del Campo Lab present their research at Protistology Open 2026. Javier del Campo delivers the 2025 Hutner Award winner talk.

Building and curating the reference databases — PR2, EukRef, eKOI and more — that turn microeukaryote metabarcoding reads into named, placed, and ecologically meaningful taxa.