Reporting by Helen Hill for CBIOMES News
The 2024 CBIOMES Annual Meeting held at the Simons Foundation in New York City June 25 – 27 brought together close to sixty collaborators to meet face-to-face, and educate one another about their individual areas of activity, share progress, and further build collaborative efforts.
The 2024 CBIOMES Annual Meeting, hosted at the Simons Foundation in New York City, brought together approximately sixty collaborators for in-depth discussions, progress sharing, and collaboration enhancement across various research areas. This year’s meeting focused on five key sessions: “Integrating Models and Data,” “Photosynthesis and Primary Production,” “Phaeocystis,” “Macromolecules,” and a “Diel Workshop Follow-up.”
The event began with a welcome from CBIOMES director Mick Follows, setting the tone for productive exchanges. Attendees introduced themselves with brief overviews of their backgrounds and research interests. Mick Follows then delivered a plenary talk titled “CBIOMES Perspective,” outlining past achievements, ongoing initiatives, and future directions as the collaboration enters its eighth year.
The first session, chaired by Mick Follows, focused on “Integrating Models and Data.” The rapid growth of molecular approaches to quantify and characterize marine plankton populations presents a tremendous opportunity to improve our empirical understanding of marine biogeography; for example, the forthcoming GRUMP data set from the Fuhrman lab. However, there is still work to be done to fully exploit these data types to constrain ecosystem and biogeochemical models, which are necessarily rooted in mass currencies. This session explored some of those opportunities and challenges. Presentations included Erin Bertrand’s “Current Community Initiatives Towards a Quantitative Understanding of Marine Microbial Processes,” Yubin Raut’s “Linking Metabarcoding Data with Global Ecosystem Models to Explore Phytoplankton Biogeography,” Francois Ribalet’s “Prochlorococcus Thermal Growth Sensitivity,” and Sangwon Hyun’s “Defining Spatial Provinces from Zooplankton ASVs.” Erin led a plenary discussion to identify lessons the CBIOMES community has learned about connecting molecular data and ecosystem models, highlighting both scientific and cultural points of interest for the wider community.
Session Two, “Photosynthesis and Primary Production,” chaired by Chris Edwards, featured four presentations on modeling primary production and quantifying photosynthesis, followed by a discussion on exciting topics for future research. Žarko Kovač’s talk, “Fluctuations and Stability of Primary Production,” reviewed the history of primary production models and modern approaches to understanding light’s role. Paul Mattern presented “Parameter Assignment in PP Models,” addressing the challenges of assigning parameter values in models based on limited observations. Shubha Sathyendranath’s talk, “Modeling Primary Production for Remote Sensing and Ecosystem Simulations,” explored whether ecosystem modelers and remote-sensing groups face different challenges in modeling primary production. Chris Edwards concluded the session with “Topics we might be thinking about?” listing neglected areas in primary production modeling that could play a significant role.
The third session, chaired by Stephanie Dutkiewicz, focused on Phaeocystis, a key blooming organism in high latitudes often overlooked in global ecosystem models. Nathan Williams (USC) discussed the biogeography and diversity of Phaeocystis from the GRUMP ASV dataset in “Diversity and Biogeography from an ASV Lens,” while Stephanie Dutkiewicz shared initial attempts at including Phaeocystis in the Darwin model in “Adding Phaeocystis to Darwin – the Role of Polymorphism.” The session also featured presentations by Erin Bertrand on the “Phaeocystis pouchetii Bloom in the Labrador Sea, 2022,” Ari Krinos on “Laboratory and Environmental ‘Omics Work on Phaeocystis,” and Laiza Cabral Faris on “Phaeocystis sp. – Results from 2013 – 2019 Monitoring Stations in the Antarctic Peninsula.” The formal presentations were followed by a wide-ranging discussion on potential future research directions to better understand this unique phytoplankton.
The fourth session, “Macromolecules,” also chaired by Mick Follows, took stock of progress toward mechanistic understanding and models of elemental stoichiometry and respiration quotients in the ocean by exploiting the organization of biomass into a handful of key macromolecular pools. CBIOMES researchers have significantly advanced empirical information in the laboratory and developed modeling approaches that are tested and calibrated by these data. Recently, we have begun seeing the first global-scale simulations of marine particulate stoichiometry underpinned by these mechanistic models. The session included presentations on macromolecular allocation and simulations in phytoplankton from Zoe Finkel on “Elemental and Macromolecular Allocation in Marine Microbes,” Zoe Aarons on “Mechanisms Driving Phytoplankton Elemental Composition Conserved Across Taxa?”, Shlomit Sharoni on “Global Scale Simulations of Macromolecular Composition and Respiratory Quotient,” and Loay on “Proteome Allocation for Predicting Metal Stoichiometry.”
The final day of the meeting featured a mini-workshop as a follow-up to the CBIOMES diel workshop held in October 2022. Co-chaired by Joe Vallino and Ioannis Tsakalakis, this session focused on incorporating diel processes affecting phytoplankton diversity into models. Discussions led to new contributions, decisions on schematic figures and tables, journal submission plans, and a timeline for completing the manuscript.
The meeting included daily poster sessions, opportunities for lightning talks, and unstructured collaboration time. The event concluded with a plenary session led by Mick Follows, summarizing key insights and outcomes. Overall, the meeting fostered a productive exchange of ideas, strengthened collaborations, and advanced research themes within the CBIOMES framework. “The meeting provided an excellent opportunity for CBIOMES researchers to connect and drive forward collaborations,” said Mick Follows. “It was a good moment to take stock of what we have achieved to date and to prioritize actions to reach key goals, including ecosystem simulations tested by global-scale molecular surveys and predictive models of particulate stoichiometry, in the next few years.”
2024 Annual Meeting presentations, videos, & materials (restricted)
Special thanks to session organizers, and plenary presenters, as well as everyone who shared a poster. Next year’s meeting will be held on June 16 – 18, 2025 at the Simons Foundation in NYC.