Marine microbial ecology aims to link microbial communities to the geochemical processes they drive. Molecular techniques have provided a view of the huge complexity of microbial communities and their metabolic potential, however, the information these approaches give about the geochemical processes is limited. Here, we combined geochemical and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing analyses to spatially link dominant microbial taxa wit...

Heterotrophic bacteria in the ocean initiate biopolymer degradation using extracellular enzymes that yield low molecular weight hydrolysis products in the environment, or by using a selfish uptake mechanism that retains the hydrolysate for the enzyme‐producing cell. The mechanism used affects the availability of hydrolysis products to other bacteria, and thus also potentially the composition and activity of the community. In m...