Motility drives bacterial encounter with particles responsible for carbon export throughout the ocean

Abstract

Numerical abundance is often considered of primary importance when identifying microbial taxa that drive biogeochemical processes. However, there are a growing number of examples where numerically less abundant microbes carry out critical ecosystem processes. Here, we discuss a paradigmatic example and the mechanism that underpins it: how motility, by dramatically increasing encounter rate, allows otherwise rare microbes to be numerically dominant on particles that are responsible for vertical carbon export throughout the ocean.