title: Microbial community structure and its functional implications.
abstract: Marine microbial communities are engines of globally important processes, such as the marine carbon, nitrogen and sulphur cycles. Recent data on the structures of these communities show that they adhere to universal biological rules. Co-occurrence patterns can help define species identities, and systems-biology tools are revealing networks of interacting microorganisms. Some microbial systems are found to change predictably, helping us to anticipate how microbial communities and their activities will shift in a changing world.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA. fuhrman@usc.edu
authors.forename: Jed A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Fuhrman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017753:Ecosystem; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends; D017752:Greenhouse Effect; D008386:Marine Biology; D014871:Water Microbiology