Due to the success of the previous Research Topic :
Microbial Response to a Rapidly Changing Marine Environment: Global Warming and Ocean Acidification we have launched a volume II of the collection.
Under the global climate change, the world’s oceans are warming more quickly than previously thought. The ocean warming could lead to remarkable changes in marine environments, such as ocean deoxygenation, acidification, and sea ice melting. Marine ecosystems are undergoing significant changes due to the current environmental changes caused by a rapidly warming ocean.
Microbial communities are diverse and productive assemblages, including phytoplankton, protists, fungi, viruses, and the two main groups of prokaryotes (Bacteria and Archaea). Since they drive major biogeochemical cycles and support higher food-webs globally, microbes are a vital component of the marine ecosystem. Moreover, microbes can be an important indicator for the environmental changes, because physiological and ecological alterations in microbial communities can herald changes not only in pathways of energy transfer through food-web but also in biogeochemical cycles. Considering the microbial communities’ pivotal roles in ongoing climate change, it is important to understand which current changes in microbial communities have occurred to date and which future changes might arise under ongoing environmental forcing of the warming ocean.
The presented Research Topic focuses on the response of microbial communities to the marine environmental changes under the ongoing climate change. Particular emphasis will be placed on how microbes physiologically respond to the climate-related changes: how local and global functional biodiversity is changing under environmental changes, and consequently how the microbial communities affect the local and global marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry.
This Research Topic will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the microbial communities that influence local and global ecosystems in rapidly changing oceans. Particularly, this collection will contribute to evaluate and predict the ongoing and future responses of various marine ecosystems associated with the global climate change.
We welcome both Original Research and Review articles concerning the following aspects of microbial communities in the changing ocean:
• Physiological responding and metabolism.
• Identification, community structure, and biodiversity.
• Quantification of microbial biomass and productivity.
• Microbial-mediated biogeochemical cycling.
• Biological response and feedback.
