The presence of ocean currents impacts the abundance and composition of marine micro-organism communities.
Researchers from the University of New South Wales collected 25 samples in the area between Antarctica and Western Australia. They identified the make-up of marine microbe communities by genetic sequencing. The results published in Nature Communications show that microbe groups thousands of kilometres apart can be closely related if they are connected by ocean currents, while being very different from groups only a few hundred metres away.
Read more at UNSW Sydney