Image: A new paper published in BioScience by Dr. Samantha Joye, and colleagues Drs Andreas Teske (UNC) and Joel E. Kostka (GATech) describes the impacts of the Macondo Blowout on Gulf microbial communities. The authors describe revealing population-level responses of hydrocarbon-degrading microbes to the unprecedented deepwater oil plume. In addition, one of the most striking features of the microbial response to the blowout was the rapid formation of large flocs of marine “snow".
