Microbial Biogeography in Global Oceanic Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past decade, significant progress has been made in characterizing the biogeography of the microbial community present in the surface ocean. Major oceanographic campaigns and distributed time series locations have revealed systematic patterns of microbial biodiversity and seasonal oscillations of community composition that are strongly associated with environmental conditions and unique ocean biomes or seascapes. However, significant spatiotemporal observational gaps still exist, such as the mesopelagic and deep, the Indian and Western Pacific, and sub-polar and/or winter conditions. Moreover, our understanding of the relationship between microbiome diversity, metabolism, and the function of the ecosystem is nascent. Further work is needed to quantify microbial community traits and their impact on marine biogeochemical rates and fluxes. In order to enhance the prediction of ocean biogeochemistry trends, establishing the global ocean baselines of microbial biodiversity and functional biogeography as well as elucidating the mechanistic properties of microbial communities that influence system-level processes is critical.

Dr. Alyse Larkin
Guest Editor

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