Benthic Microbial Community in Marine and Coastal Environment

Dear Colleagues,

The oceans harbor a remarkable diversity of marine microorganisms. The sediment seafloor of the coastal shelf and deep-sea habitat, including the microbial community, covers nearly 70% of the Earth's surface. However, further study is needed regarding this extensive, lesser-known ecosystem's structure, diversity, function, and biochemical processes. The need to understand the impact of climate-related events such as acidification, pollution, hypoxia, and marine heat waves is becoming more urgent. The marine microbial habitat regulates marine ecosystem functioning, including energy transport, and carbon and nitrogen cycling across the sediment–water interface. Sediment microbial metabolic activities influence marine environments through organic matter deposition, recycling, and decomposition across seafloor regions. Compared to the water column microbial sphere, the sediment microbial community is unique as this habitat processes myriad life forms, including prokaryotes, archaea, and microphytobenthos. Many organisms demonstrate outstanding potential for natural products and medicinal compound discovery. Elucidating the interactions between components of the benthic microbiota and characterizing the implications of biodiversity changes for ecosystem functions, particularly in response to anthropogenic disturbance, remain continuing challenges.

There is a critical need to better understand and discover undocumented species of archaea, bacteria, micro-eukaryotes, and viruses. With the advances in marine genomics, culturing techniques, and bioinformatics, we can improve our understanding of the functional groups that drive critical biogeochemical cycles and offer the prospect of medicinal compounds from natural products.

This Special Issue aims to explore the diversity of coastal and deep-sea benthic microbial communities, from prokaryotes to macrofauna, and the linkages that impact community metabolism, biogeochemical fluxes, ecosystem services, and coupled natural–human systems. For example, there is a need to investigate microbial community adaptation concerning the co-occurrence of pathogens and pollution in relation to environmental change. The scope may also include the kinetics of vital metabolic processes such as remineralization. Understanding how marine sediments play a role in the global cycle to sequester carbon and recycle nutrients is imperative. The social and ecological factors associated with marine protected areas may also be considered. This issue will highlight studies across various geographic systems, investigating biodiversity, biochemical mechanisms, and techniques pertaining to microbial natural products with human health impacts.

Dr. John P. Bucci
Guest Editor

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