IIT-M research uncovers global patterns of marine microbial community assembly

Researchers from IIT-Madras’ Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI say they have identified how rare marine microorganisms help keep ocean ecosystems stable. The study, published in mSystems, uses integrated microbial sequencing data from more than 4,600 publicly available ocean samples collected across tropical, temperate and polar regions. It analyzes how bacterial communities assemble, interact and maintain stability in different marine environments, adding global-scale biogeographic insights. Co-authors include Pranathi Ravikumar, Aarti Ravindran and Karthik Raman from IIT Madras. A key finding is that rare “specialist” bacteria contribute disproportionately to stability by acting as connectors in microbial interaction networks; computational removal of these specialists significantly weakened network stability. The work also finds that the balance between randomness and environmental selection varies by latitude.