I am a biologist primarily working on the deep sea and molluscs (incl. snails, clams, octopuses, chitons, etc.). A focus of my research is to document and understand biodiversity and its evolution across multiple levels: from species to ecosystem, and from phenome to genome. Over geological timescales, life has evolved countless ‘novelties’ in order to gain new functions and conquer new environments. Like how wings allowed access to the sky, living in ‘extreme’ habitats such as deep-sea hot vents require novel adaptations. I am interested in 1) the diversity of organisms and their novelties, 2) how they help the organism adapt to the environment, and 3) by what trajectories do these novelties arise (and if there are common laws governing them).

I am currently a Senior Scientist with Tenure at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the Japanese national research institute for marine sciences. I am also a visiting scientist of Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt, and a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, Mollusc Specialist Group. I have dived up to >6,000 m deep in the manned submersibles DSV SHINKAI 6500 and TRITON 3300/3 Mk. II in person to explore hot vents and other deep-sea environments, although I also often work with remotely operated submersibles. I am an avid collector of molluscs (‘shell collector’) and photographer.

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Scaly-foot Snail

A favourite among my study species is the Scaly-foot Snail (Chrysomallon squamiferum), an ‘armored snail‘ living in hot vents over 2000 m deep, which I formally named in 2015 as a part of my doctorate thesis at the University of Oxford studying peltospirid snails from deep-sea hydrothermal vents of the Indian Ocean and Antarctica. It is the only snail with dermal scales, which along with its shell are often coated in iron sulfide — the only known animal to have a skeleton composed (partly) of iron sulfide. The iron content vary depending on the environment, iron-rich specimens stick to magnet and will rust if not properly cared for.

Chrysomallon squamiferum Chen et al., 2015

The Scaly-foot Snail is now on the IUCN Red List as the first species Endangered by deep-sea mining risks — click here to read our paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution. We also deciphered its whole genome and found clues on how it evolved the unique scale armour — click here to read our paper in Nature Communications.