Marine microbial communities are structured by a complex interplay of deterministic and stochastic processes, yet how these vary across latitudes remains poorly understood. Most long‐term microbial observatories are restricted to temperate regions, limiting our ability to assess latitudinal contrasts in microbial dynamics. Here, we compare coastal microbial communities from two contrasting marine time‐series stations using sta...

Aim Dispersal and environmental gradients shape marine microbial communities, yet the relative importance of these factors across taxa with distinct sizes and dispersal capacity in different ocean layers is unknown. Here, we report a comparative analysis of surface and deep ocean microbial beta diversity and examine how these patterns are tied to oceanic distance and environmental gradients. Location Tropical and subtropical o...

How much temporal recurrence is present in microbial assemblages is still an unanswered ecological question. Even though marked seasonal changes have been reported for whole microbial communities, less is known on the dynamics and seasonality of individual taxa. Here, we aim at understanding microbial recurrence at three different levels: community, taxonomic group and operational taxonomic units (OTUs). For that, we focused o...

Summary Although protists are critical components of marine ecosystems, they are still poorly characterized. Here we analysed the taxonomic diversity of planktonic and benthic protist communities collected in six distant E uropean coastal sites. Environmental deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA ) and ribonucleic acid ( RNA ) from three size fractions (pico‐, nano‐ and micro/mesoplankton), as well as from dissolved DNA and surface sedi...

A fundamental question in ecology is whether microorganisms follow the same patterns as multicellular organisms when it comes to population structure and levels of genetic diversity. Enormous population sizes, predominately asexual reproduction and presumably high dispersal because of small body size could have profound implications on their genetic diversity and population structure. Here, we have analysed the population gene...