* Brief Summary * Microbial communities present in the Gulf of Mexico rapidly responded to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Oceanospirillales, Colwellia, and Cycloclasticus were members of the community that initially dominated in the deep-water plume samples. This changed when the well was capped and the group that dominated was methanotrophs or oil-degraders. None of the initial groups were found in the surface water samples, instead bacteria such as Alphaproteobacteria and Cyanobacteria were found to be the most abundant organisms in these collected samples. This suggests that the temperature of the water plays a direct role in how the microbial community responds to hydrocarbons. Another defense for the role of temperature would be the abundance of growth of Colwellia when incubated at 4oC compared to the minimal growth when incubated at room temperature. In laboratory conditions, Colwellia was the main organism that incorporated Carbon 13 in SIP experiments and given its abundance in the sample, it is likely that Colwellia was active in ethane and propane oxidation in situ. Colwellia was also capable of incorporating Carbon 13 benzene, and its abundance in crude oil without natural gas suggests that Colwellia has a wide range of abilities to be able to degrade multiple kinds of hydrocarbons. The fact that Colwellia could grow from ethane and propane, and to a lesser extent, Oceanospirillales, suggests that the high natural gas content in the spill was advantageous to the organisms. * Impact Factor * The impact factor for the journal in 2013, PNAS or Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, is 9.809. * Importance of the published work in the field * Strength: I believe that strength that this published work has for this field would include that it continues the knowledge of underwater