Research Product

The marine environment, especially coral reef environments with its vast biodiversity, offers many unique niches for opportunities to explore and discover novel microorganisms and the significant roles they assume. A number of microbial floras have already been described and shown to yield genetically novel microorganisms, although most are non-culturable at this time. The search for increasing our knowledge of microbial biodiversity should not exclude microorganisms associated with higher organisms, including descriptions and examination of functional roles of mutualistic symbioses, pathogenic associations, and other categories of assemblages. Microorganisms are fundamentally important to the cycling of nutrients among different trophic levels, remineralization of recalcitrant substrates, and survival of higher organisms by imparting unique survival qualities. All of these organisms are necessary to maintain the ecological balance of marine environments; the disruption or loss of certain components of the community may permanently alter entire ecosystems. One of the most germane issues to address is the immense scale, intensity and irreversibility of habitat modification and subsequent loss of species diversity. Synergistic effects of global climate change and burgeoning anthropogenic stresses induced by increased development in coastal regions are difficult to discern and often compounded. The need to assess entire ecosystem responses to perturbations is critical since long-term consequences may affect overall reproduction, recruitment, community structure and composition of the entire species assemblages and perhaps, ultimately the survival and fate of entire complex and diverse living communities. Potential causes and effect of species decline and the concomitant loss of biodiversity and habitat should be identified