The 7th International Symposium on Deep-Sea Corals (ISDSC7) was held in Cartagena, Colombia from July 29 to August 2, 2019. This meeting brought together scientists, students, managers, policymakers, and industry specialists who presented advances in deep-sea coral systems – from the hadal to the mesophotic, and inclusive of sponges – and discussed new ideas to increase understanding of deep-sea corals in a time of environmental crisis. This Research Topic gathers papers presented at the ISDSC7. Themes of the symposium, and of this Research Topic, include:

- Anthropogenic stressors: impacts from single to multiple stressors on organisms, communities and ecosystems, e.g. warming, oxygen decrease, ocean acidification, pollution, physical damage; resilience and recovery; restoration.

- Biogeography, environmental controls and mapping: patterns of community composition, diversity, and distribution; habitat mapping and suitability modeling.

- Conservation and management of deep-sea coral and sponge ecosystems: identification of vulnerable biogenic habitats; biodiversity conservation; fisheries and design of marine protected areas; legal instruments and governance; deep-sea mining.

- Connectivity & phylogeography: population connectivity, population genetics, phylogeography and microevolutionary patterns; larval dispersal.

- Corals and changing ocean environments: paleo-oceanography and historical environmental reconstructions; biomineralization; modeling impacts of climate change, ocean acidification, and future habitat suitability.

- Ecological interactions: biogeochemical cycling, alterations of ocean chemistry, and carbon sequestration; links with surrounding ecosystems; hydrodynamics and food supply, trophic ecology, and bentho-pelagic coupling; habitat provision, symbiotic relationships, parasitism.

- Habitat and diversity characterization: exploration, biodiversity surveys, discovery.

- Organismal biology & natural history: reproduction, development, growth, behavior, disease, physiology.

- Systematics & evolution: taxonomy, fossil record, molecular phylogenetics, and macroevolutionary patterns.

- Technical advances and novel methods: experimental design, environmental DNA, omics, microbiome, imaging technologies, machine learning, photogrammetry, time-series.

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Frontiers in Marine Science

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