Protist community composition in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean during austral summer 2010

Knowledge about the protist diversity of the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean is scarce. We tested the hypothesis that distinct protist community assemblages characterize large-scale water masses. Therefore, we determined the composition and biogeography of late summer protist assemblages along...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Polar biology 2014-03, Vol.37 (3), p.375-389
Main Authors: Wolf, Christian, Frickenhaus, Stephan, Kilias, Estelle S., Peeken, Ilka, Metfies, Katja
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Antarctic front
Antarctic zone
Aquatic ecosystems
Bacillariophyceae
Biogeography
Biological and medical sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Community composition
Ecology
Environmental conditions
Eukaryotes
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
High performance liquid chromatography
Life Sciences
Liquid chromatography
Microbial activity
Microbiology
Microorganisms
Ocean
Oceanography
Oceans
Original Paper
Particular ecosystems
Plankton
Plant Sciences
Relative abundance
Sea water ecosystems
Stramenopiles
Synecology
Zoology
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Summary:Knowledge about the protist diversity of the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean is scarce. We tested the hypothesis that distinct protist community assemblages characterize large-scale water masses. Therefore, we determined the composition and biogeography of late summer protist assemblages along a transect from the coast of New Zealand to the eastern Ross Sea. We used state of the art molecular approaches, such as automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis and 454-pyrosequencing, combined with high-performance liquid chromatography pigment analysis to study the protist assemblage. We found distinct biogeographic patterns defined by the environmental conditions in the particular region. Different water masses harbored different microbial communities. In contrast to the Arctic Ocean, picoeukaryotes had minor importance throughout the investigated transect and showed very low contribution south of the Polar Front. Dinoflagellates, Syndiniales, and small stramenopiles were dominating the sequence assemblage in the Subantarctic Zone, whereas the relative abundance of diatoms increased southwards, in the Polar Frontal Zone and Antarctic Zone. South of the Polar Front, most sequences belonged to haptophytes. This study delivers a comprehensive and taxon detailed overview of the protist composition in the investigated area during the austral summer 2010.
ISSN:0722-4060
1432-2056
DOI:10.1007/s00300-013-1438-x