ABSTRACT:  The ocean microbiome is fundamental for the functioning of the biosphere. This may be taken for granted by many people, as if we knew it all along. Yet, the importance of microbial life in the ocean became evident during the 20th century thanks, in part, to multiple technological developments in microscopy, molecular biology, remote sensing, and DNA sequencing. Today, we know that there are about 1029 microbial cells in the oceans, a vast number considering that the number of stars in the visible universe is about 1024. Furthermore, we now know that about 70% of the biomass of the ocean is microbial and that ocean microbes are responsible for ~50% of the planetary primary production. Even though the manifold advances, several questions that were posed long ago are still partially answered: How do microbes evolve and form new populations and species? Which microbes interact and how? Are microbial ecosystems functionally redundant? In a context of global change, we need urgent answers to these questions, if we are to understand how the ocean microbiome will respond and adapt to future climates and what may be the consequences for ecosystems and our society. In this presentation, I will broadly address these questions highlighting some of the research done at our lab, which hopefully leads to new answers.

BIOGRAPHY: Ramiro Logares (Buenos Aires, Argentina) obtained his degree in biology at the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Bariloche, Argentina. He obtained his PhD at Lund University, Ecology Department, Sweden, and afterward, he did a postdoc at Uppsala University (Evolutionary Biology Centre), Sweden. Since 2010, he has been at the Department of Marine Biology and Oceanography at the ICM-CSIC, Barcelona. Initially, he was a Marie Curie, then a Juan de la Cierva, and afterward a Ramon y Cajal fellow. Since 2019, he is a Científico Titular at the ICM. He leads a research team on microbial computational ecology and evolution. His main research lines aim at 1) understanding the structuring and dynamics of natural microbial communities using ecological theory, 2) disentangling the network of microbial interactions in ecosystems, and 3) linking the gene content of genomes, communities, and their variation, with ecological function and evolutionary processes.