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Guillaume Mitta: IHPE is a unit born from the meeting of a Perpignan research group and a group from Montpellier. Its institutions are the CNRS, the University of Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD), the University of Montpellier (UM) and the Ifremer. It has 36 permanent staff and 21 non-permanent staff (doctoral and postdoctoral fellows) divided into 2 research teams on the UPVD and UM campuses.

One team, "ECOLogy and EVolution of Interactions" (Resp: Grunau C.), is mainly interested in freshwater aquatic models (notably schistosomes, parasitic trematodes responsible for bilharziasis). The other team, "Mechanisms of Adaptation and Interaction in the Marine Environment" (Resp: Destoumieux-Garzon D.), studies marine models (oysters and coral). Both teams, however, adopt a highly integrative and transversal approach through "challenges" that cross usual disciplinary fields: Relative weight of genetics and epigenetics in adaptative evolution (Resp: Grunau C.); Dynamics of the holobiont and fitness (Resp: Toulza E. & Montagnani C.).

We recently published two major results:

1. The deciphering of the origin of an epidemic of urogenital schistosomiasis (120 cases in South Corsica in 2014 and new contaminations in 2015 & 2016) which is one of the first outbreak of this tropical disease in Europe. Global warming and some hybridization drove this unexpected emergence. We are Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization for our expertise on this parasite.
2. We unraveled the mechanism of pathogenesis that kills 60 to 80% of juvenile oysters yearly in France and in many producing countries (Nature Communications

We develop integrative approaches to these interactions at different scales: from the finest molecular mechanisms to the population level. This research is part of an evolutionary ecologic approach at the interface between functional and population biology. It perfectly fits within the objectives and philosophy of LabEx TULIP.

If the animal component of TULIP initially mainly focused on eco-evolutionist issues and now increasingly integrates functional approaches, the IHPE lab in fact adopted the opposite approach by starting from purely functional issues and moving towards ever more ecological and evolutionary approaches. Thus, the integration of the IHPE within TULIP will bring a symmetrical vision thus strengthening the interfaces and better balancing environmental and functional biology, both in animals and plants within the LabEx.

Our research fully fits within the LabEx's MTR2 'interactions between organisms' and MTR3 ‘Environmental effects on interactions between organisms’, as well as MTR1, 'Interactions between organisms & environment’, particularly within our research on coral adaptability to global warming.

Finally, the IHPE is also part of the LabEx CeMEB. Our participation to TULIP will thus bridge our complementary communities in Occitania, from Toulouse to Montpellier including Perpignan thus giving a lot of coherence at the regional scale.

Reminder of TULIP/IHPE history until integration

• First contact on 27 June, 2017
• Discussion within the TULIP Scientific committee on 23 October, 2017
• Discussion within the TULIP Executive committee on 30 November, 2017
• Presentation seminar in General Assembly on 5 March, 2018
• Presentation to the extended Executive committee (including our institutions) on 6 March, 2018
• Expected IHPE Integration Date: 1 January, 2019

We are convinced that to understand and predict the evolution of biological systems we need to work on interactions along a continuum from molecular mechanisms to the modeling of biological systems at every scale. As I said earlier, IHPE is at one end of the bridge connecting the two scientific domains of biology that TULIP is working to bring together and our goal is to mobilize our expertise and that of researchers from the LabEx community to implement predictive models of the evolution of the systems we are studying. This is a crucial issue in the context of global change and especially because our models have important medical, ecological, evolutionary or economic implications.