Microbial energy

Microbial growth efficiency (MGE) is a critical ecological parameter that describes the amount of energy required for biomass production and defines the proportion of carbon lost from marine microbial foodwebs through respiration. Despite its significance our understanding of the ecological and biological drivers of MGE is poor. Our proposed work will address this need by developing critical new insights into MGE in the global ocean: identifying the ecological conditions and microbial taxa that account for the variance in MGE along a nearshore-offshore gradient. We will make these measurements using an innovative combination of two new tracer-based techniques, along with flow cytometry and microbial community structure analysis. We will use machine learning techniques - currently underutilized in microbial ecology - to provide predictive analytics and link microbial community structure, microbial abundance, and microbial activity. To carry out our study we will conduct a cruise in the California Current ecosystem along the central and southern California coast, a well-characterized and heterogenous region that is broadly representative of key ecosystems in the global ocean. Our proposed effort is a new collaboration between three early career researchers representing biological and chemical oceanography. We will leverage the intrinsic societal importance of this work to carry out a program of education and outreach at multiple levels.