S8 Marine microbes as mediators of ocean processes

Marine microbes underpin all of the production-based ocean ecosystem services, and impact on human health and wellbeing through their regulation of climate, formation of harmful algal blooms (HABs) and support of biodiversity at multiple dimensions and trophic levels. Changes at the base of the foodweb will therefore have far-reaching consequences on the delivery of ocean ecosystem services, worth over $42 billion dollars in Australian waters annually. This symposium invites presentations on microbial diversity and function across marine ecosystems, highlighting new experimental, observational, and modeling approaches to understand the ecological and biogeochemical roles of these critical organisms.