Fereidoun Rassoulzadegan began his career working on ciliate microzooplankton in the 1970's as one of the pioneers bringing microbial food webs into the limelight. His contributions over the past 30 odd years have spanned from the nutrition of tintinnid ciliates to the relationships between limiting nutrients and dissolved organic carbon dynamics. This year he will be assuming a new role, that of 'Emeritus', and to mark the occasion a special issue of Aquatic Microbial Ecology, composed of contributions from leading researchers in the field of microbial ecology, has been published.