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Seagrasses are the only group of fully-submerged marine angiosperms, and are globally distributed along coastlines of every continent except Antarctica \cite{Costanza_1997}. They form dense meadows in shallow waters along the coastline, providing critical habitat for many marine species \cite{Harborne_2006}. These meadows harbor tremendous amounts of biodiversity, providing homes to many rare/endemic macroogramisms and are critical in biogeochemical cycling in the ocean system \cite{Orth_2006}. Although they occupy only a small percentage of area on Earth \cite{Costanza_1997} they are one of the most important carbon sinks, sequestering carbon 35X faster than Tropical Rainforests \cite{Mcleod_2011} and storing this carbon for millennia if left undisturbed \cite{Macreadie_2012} \cite{Mateo_1997} \cite{Serrano_2012}.   The levels of biodiversity in seagrass beds and their importance in biogeochemical cycling and carbon sequestration makes them excellent candidates for investigating unexplored microbial eukaryotic diversity. Microeukaryotes themselves play a variety of important roles in coastal and marine ecosystems; they are primary producers, predators/prey, decomposers, involved in biogeochemical cycling, untapped sources of natural products, potential pathogens and symbionts \cite{Whitman_1998}\cite{Imhoff_2016}. \cite{Whitman_1998}\cite{Imhoff_2016}\cite{Caron_1999}\cite{Li_1994}.  It is likely that microeukaryotes contribute to seagrass bed biodiversity and to biogeochemical cycling and carbon sequestration. We propose to perform a global census of microbial eukaryotes found in association with the leaves, roots, and sediment of the seagrass _Zostera marina_. We will then expand our investigation to census the microbial eukaryotes found in association with plants across the Order Alismatales, which includes three independent lineages of seagrasses. Concurrently with the afformentioned censuses, we will establish a culture collection of microbial eukaryotes found associated with _Zostera marina_ from Bodega Bay, California. We are uniquely positioned to be successful at the proposed research; using funds provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, we have already established a program to explore bacterial diversity within seagrass beds, and have completed the majority of field work and formed collaborations with other seagrass researchers from both the ZEN group and other research institutions.