The 14th Asian Symposium of Microbial Ecology (ASME) convened from September 18-20, 2024, at the prestigious Environmental Research Building of National Taiwan University in Taipei. This event brought together leading researchers and experts in the field of microbial ecology from across Asia and beyond. One of the standout sessions of the symposium was the Eukaryotic Microbiome session, which featured cutting-edge research on eukaryotic microbes and their ecological roles. Charmaine shared her groundbreaking work on niche partitioning in the cosmopolitan eukaryotic picophytoplankton genus Bathycoccus.