Researchers at USC Dornsife have developed a new framework to categorize ocean microbes into eight functional groups based on their metabolic strategies. By grouping these organisms by what they do rather than their individual species, scientists can better understand how they regulate the marine carbon cycle. This breakthrough helps address a major gap in current climate models, which often struggle with the immense biological complexity of the ocean. Improving these models allows for more accurate predictions of how the ocean will act as a carbon sink as global temperatures rise.
