Community structure and species diversity of Harpacticoida (Crustacea: Copepoda) at two sites in the deep sea of the Angola Basin (Southeast Atlantic)

George, Kai Horst; Veit-Köhler, Gritta; Arbizu, Pedro Martínez; Seifried, Sybille; Rose, Armin; Willen, Elke; Bröhldick, Karin; Corgosinho, Paulo Henrique Costa; Drewes, Jan; Menzel, L.; Moura, Gisela; Schminke, Horst Kurt

doi:10.1007/s13127-013-0154-2

Cited by 34 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…important unknown genetic diversity exists within several deepsea metazoan phyla (Figure 4), our results tend to challenge these ambitious predictions and support the view that a large part of the planet's biodiversity remains to be discovered in the deep sea (e.g., Grassle and Maciolek, 1992;Poore and Wilson, 1993;Brandt et al, 2007;George et al, 2014). Many of these OTUs could not be assigned to any taxonomic group and some could therefore represent new higher taxa.…”

Section: Discussion Most Deep-sea Diversity Is Unknownsupporting

confidence: 74%

Worldwide Analysis of Sedimentary DNA Reveals Major Gaps in Taxonomic Knowledge of Deep-Sea Benthos

et al. 2016

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Deep-sea sediments represent the largest but least known ecosystem on earth. With increasing anthropogenic pressure, it is now a matter of urgency to improve our understanding of deep-sea biodiversity. Traditional morpho-taxonomic studies suggest that the ocean floor hosts extraordinarily diverse benthic communities. However, due to both its remoteness and a lack of expert taxonomists, assessing deep-sea diversity is a very challenging task. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding offers a powerful tool to complement morpho-taxonomic studies. Here we use eDNA to assess benthic metazoan diversity in 39 deep-sea sediment samples from bathyal and abyssal depths worldwide. The eDNA dataset was dominated by meiobenthic taxa and we identified all animal phyla commonly found in the deep-sea benthos; yet, the diversity within these phyla remains largely unknown. The large numbers of taxonomically unassigned molecular operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were not equally distributed among phyla, with nematodes and platyhelminthes being the most poorly characterized from a taxonomic perspective. While the data obtained here reveal pronounced heterogeneity and vast amounts of unknown biodiversity in the deep sea, they also expose the difficulties in exploiting metabarcoding datasets resulting from the lack of taxonomic knowledge and appropriate reference databases. Overall, our study demonstrates the promising potential of eDNA metabarcoding to accelerate the assessment of deep-sea biodiversity for pure and applied deep-sea environmental research but also emphasizes the necessity to integrate such new approaches with traditional morphology-based examination of deep-sea organisms.

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Section: Discussion Most Deep-sea Diversity Is Unknownsupporting

confidence: 74%

Worldwide Analysis of Sedimentary DNA Reveals Major Gaps in Taxonomic Knowledge of Deep-Sea Benthos

et al. 2016

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“…Nonetheless, assessing species compositions for certain areas in ecological studies (e.g., Gollner et al, 2010;George et al, 2014;Plum et al, 2015;Schmidt and Martínez Arbizu, 2015) is very important and identifications are still mostly carried out by morphology only. Most studies do not focus only on single sampling sites but on various sites with several sample replicates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Sample Fixation on Specimen Identification in Biodiversity Assemblies Based on Proteomic Data (MALDI-TOF)

Rossel

Arbizu

2018

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Recently, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry has been used to reliably identify taxonomically difficult harpacticoid copepods from sediment samples. In agreement with former studies, a negative impact of short storage periods was stated. Other studies reported inferior mass spectra quality from samples fixated in varying ethanol concentrations. Therefore, sediment samples from a mudflat sampling site in the North Sea were stored under different temperature conditions to explore possible storage effects. Samples were fixated with either 70 or 100% ethanol and specimens were measured using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry after 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 12 weeks. The changes in number of peaks per species and the ability to identify specimens based on mass spectra were analyzed quality measurements. We show that storage temperature had a major impact on data quality, as for some species a loss of up to 50% of mass peaks and an increase of failed measurements to over 70% was observed. However, the effect of different ethanol concentrations on data quality was negligible. Concluding from these results, storage of metazoan samples in general and, particularly, of sediment samples at low temperatures of around −25 • C is recommended to receive high-quality mass spectra for specimen identification.

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“…Metazoans exhibit similar assemblage characteristics. In the abyssal Angola Basin (SE Atlantic), 5 megacorer deployments yielded 682 species of harpacticoid copepods, of which 56% were singletons and 99.3% were new to science44. A total of 223 box cores from 10 stations on a 176-km transect along the 2,100-m depth contour in the NW Atlantic yielded 798 macrofaunal species, 21% of them singletons, 11% doubletons and 460 undescribed45.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, many of these undescribed species were rare, making comparisons with other studies difficult. The prevalence of rare undescribed species is a normal feature of the deep-sea benthos4484 but in the case of monothalamids, it is sometimes compounded by intraspecific morphological plasticity8586. We mitigated these challenges as far as possible by photographing every specimen extracted from the samples, and by careful comparison (on the same slide) of those from the same or different samples that appeared similar.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel benthic foraminifera are abundant and diverse in an area of the abyssal equatorial Pacific licensed for polymetallic nodule exploration

Goineau

Gooday

2017

Sci Rep

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The benthic biota of the Clarion–Clipperton Zone (CCZ, abyssal eastern equatorial Pacific) is the focus of a major research effort linked to possible future mining of polymetallic nodules. Within the framework of ABYSSLINE, a biological baseline study conducted on behalf of Seabed Resources Development Ltd. in the UK-1 exploration contract area (eastern CCZ, ~4,080 m water depth), we analysed foraminifera (testate protists), including ‘live’ (Rose Bengal stained) and dead tests, in 5 cores (0–1 cm layer, >150-μm fraction) recovered during separate megacorer deployments inside a 30 by 30 km seafloor area. In both categories (live and dead) we distinguished between complete and fragmented specimens. The outstanding feature of these assemblages is the overwhelming predominance of monothalamids, a group often ignored in foraminiferal studies. These single-chambered foraminifera, which include agglutinated tubes, spheres and komokiaceans, represented 79% of 3,607 complete tests, 98% of 1,798 fragments and 76% of the 416 morphospecies (live and dead combined) in our samples. Only 3.1% of monothalamid species and 9.8% of all species in the UK-1 assemblages are scientifically described and many are rare (29% singletons). Our results emphasise how little is known about foraminifera in abyssal areas that may experience major impacts from future mining activities.

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Community structure and species diversity of Harpacticoida (Crustacea: Copepoda) at two sites in the deep sea of the Angola Basin (Southeast Atlantic)

Cited by 34 publications

References 84 publications

Worldwide Analysis of Sedimentary DNA Reveals Major Gaps in Taxonomic Knowledge of Deep-Sea Benthos

Worldwide Analysis of Sedimentary DNA Reveals Major Gaps in Taxonomic Knowledge of Deep-Sea Benthos

Effects of Sample Fixation on Specimen Identification in Biodiversity Assemblies Based on Proteomic Data (MALDI-TOF)

Novel benthic foraminifera are abundant and diverse in an area of the abyssal equatorial Pacific licensed for polymetallic nodule exploration

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