Fabien Lombard

Abstract In marine ecosystems, critical services like fish production, carbon export, or the delivery of nutrients through N2-fixation rely heavily on the size spectrum of pelagic organisms, particularly mesoplankton (200-20,000 µm). However, the linkages between environmental factors and mesoplankton spectral biogeography remain largely unresolved, as so far only limited datasets exist to understand the large-scale shifts in mesoplankton size.

Abstract Coral reefs are marine biodiversity hotspots that provide a wide range of ecosystem services1. They are reservoirs of bioactive metabolites, many produced by microorganisms associated with reef invertebrate hosts2. However, for the keystone species of coral reefs—the reef-building corals—we still lack a systematic assessment of their microbially encoded biosynthetic potential and the molecular resources at stake due to the alarming decline in reef biodiversity.

Abstract Plankton are essential in marine ecosystems. However, our knowledge of overall community structure is sparse due to inconsistent sampling across their very large organismal size range. Here we use diverse imaging methods to establish complete plankton inventories of organisms spanning five orders of magnitude in size. Plankton community size and trophic structure variation validate a long-held theoretical link between organism size-spectra and ecosystem trophic structures.