Composition and Patterns of Taxa Assemblages in the Western Channel Assessed by 18S Sequencing, Microscopy and Flow Cytometry

Abstract

Plankton monitoring by microscopy offers long-term ecological perspective of plankton com-munities but different detection approaches are biased uniquely. Genetic identification of marine plankton has become standard but is still not used in routine monitoring. This study assessed the diversity of plankton taxa using 18S high throughput sequencing from 2011-2012 from small-volume (~200ml) samples from the Water and Microplankton Sampler (WaMS) deployed on the Continuous Plankton Recorder platform (CPR). The 18S-HTS survey revealed a bias towards heterotrophic taxa, and phototrophs under 10µm within the photosynthetic community. In comparison with phytoplankton microscopic counts from the CPR survey and Western Channel Observatory station L4, only 8-12 taxonomic families were common to all three surveys, with a bias towards larger diatoms and dinoflagellate taxa in microscopy surveys. The WaMS survey detected a contrasting but complementary taxa set to that of microscopic surveys. Additional Quantitative PCR was carried out on the picoeukaryotic pelagophyte, Aureococcus anophagefferens, and the nanoeukaryotic potential harmful algae, Pseudo-nitzschia delicatissima, from 2011-2013. This confirmed the persistence presence of A. anophagefferens in the Western Channel and an elevated abundance of both species in 2011. Species specific seasonality were distinct from those of aggregrate phytoplankton groups.

Phytoplankton Diversity and Co-Dependency in a Stratified Oligotrophic Ecosystem in the South Adriatic Sea

“…This can be explained with multiple copies of dinoflagellate genomes [68] and/or PCR biases in the metagenomic amplicon sequencing approach [69]. The prevalence of sequences of these, for hosts, fatal parasites, are shown in all major oligotrophic oceans and seas, including the Mediterranean [70] and Adriatic Sea [71] especially within the smallest size-fraction (<5 µm) [72].…”