Introduction
Warming and acidification are representative of ongoing pronounced changes in the world’s oceans today. Increasing sea water temperature adjusts basal metabolic rates or physiological status of marine organisms (Reid et al., 2019), and potentially forces some species to shift their distribution ranges (Benedetti et al., 2021). Ocean acidification results in physiological stress of organisms, inhibits their growth, and decreases biological calcification rates, although the degree and direction of these effects vary among taxonomic groups. For this Research Topic, we have focused on the responses of microbial communities. As a vital component of the marine ecosystem microbes play pivotal roles, not only in pathways of energy transfer through the food web but also in global biogeochemical cycles (e.g., Falkowski and Raven, 2013). This Research Topic was conceived to contribute to the understanding of present and future changes in microbial communities in recognition of ongoing warming and acidifying oceanic conditions.
The first volume of this Research Topic on Microbial response to a rapidly changing marine environment: Global warming and ocean acidification was launched in 2020 with a total of 10 articles published, covering the wide scope of physiological and ecological responses of diverse taxonomic groups to environmental changes in a range of geographic regions, as summarized in our Editorial (Yun et al., 2021). Due to the success of the first volume, we launched volume II of the Research Topic in 2021. We now add a total of 11 new fascinating articles of which many expand our knowledge on specific aspects of physiological responses to environmental changes. Several articles focused on the alterations of dissolved organic matter (DOM) by bacteria and algae under warming and acidifying conditions, and other works used ecological and model based approaches to examine spatio-temporal dynamics.
Yun M. S., Sun J., Lovejoy C. & Lee S. H., 2022. Editorial: microbial response to a rapidly changing marine environment: global warming and ocean acidification, volume II. Frontiers in Microbiology 13: 1094511. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.1094511. Article.
