Welcome to the Microbial Oceanography Lab at the University of Vienna

Marine microbes are uniquely important to life and form the major pillars of the biosphere. Their unique metabolisms allow marine microbes to carry out many steps of the biogeochemical cycles that other organisms are unable to complete.

Microbial oceanography focuses on deciphering the metabolic activity of Bacteria and Archaea thriving in the open ocean and relating their community composition to the biogeochemical fluxes in the water masses. This requires an interdisciplinary approach linking microbial and molecular ecology to biogeochemistry and to large scale water mass transport studied in physical oceanography.

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Our main focus is the microbial oceanography of the deep ocean where the prokaryotic activity is relatively low compared to the euphotic zone. The deep ocean comprises about 70% of the total ocean volume and hence deep-water microbes mediate a substantial fraction of the biogeochemical cycles with thus far unknown metabolic pathways. We develop and improve available methods in molecular biology and biogeochemistry to make them usable in the most oligotrophic parts of the ocean. Then the information from biology and biogeochemistry is linked for a better understanding of how the microbial community might work in the dark ocean.

News

13.12.2022
 

Decoupling of respiration rates and abundance in marine Prokaryoplankton

Publication
30.11.2022
 

Limited carbon cycling due to high-pressure effects on the deep-sea microbiome

Publication
28.11.2022
 

Genomes and phenomes of microbial individuals in their natural environment

News
14.11.2022
 

Congratulations to Chie and all co-authors

News
12.09.2022
 

Welcome to Dmytro Spriahailo

News
01.09.2022
 

Global contribution of pelagic fungi to protein degradation in the ocean

Publication

Video Testimonials

Maria Pinto, PhD Student

Chie Amano, PostDoc

Federico Baltar, Assistant Professor