Time series and beyond: multifaceted plankton research at a marine Mediterranean LTER site

Abstract

Plankton are a pivotal component of the diversity and functioning of coastal marine ecosystems. A long time-series of observations is the best tool to trace their patterns and variability over multiple scales, ultimately providing a sound foundation for assessing, modelling and predicting the effects of anthropogenic and natural environmental changes on pelagic communities. At the same time, a long time-series constitutes a formidable asset for different kinds of research on specific questions that emerge from the observations, whereby the results of these complementary studies provide precious interpretative tools that augment the informative value of the data collected. In this paper, we review more than 140 studies that have been developed around a Mediterranean plankton time series gathered in the Gulf of Naples at the station LTER-MC since 1984. These studies have addressed different topics concerning marine plankton, which have included: i) seasonal patterns and trends; ii) taxonomic diversity, with a focus on key or harmful algal species and the discovery of many new taxa; iii) molecular diversity of selected species, groups of species or the whole planktonic community; iv) life cycles of several phyto- and zooplankton species; and v) interactions among species through trophic relationships, parasites and viruses. Overall, the products of this research demonstrate the great value of time series besides the record of fluctuations and trends, and highlight their primary role in the development of the scientific knowledge of plankton much beyond the local scale.

Habitat Heterogeneity and Connectivity: Effects on the Planktonic Protist Community Structure at Two Adjacent Coastal Sites (the Lagoon and the Gulf of Venice, Northern Adriatic Sea, Italy) Revealed by Metabarcoding

“…Long Term Ecological Research sites constitute inspiring places, where long term observations stimulate a wide range of specific research activities (Peters, 2010) that provide, in turn, precious tools for interpreting long term data, thus increasing their informative value (Zingone et al, 2019). This is the case for metabarcoding studies which are particularly valuable at LTER sites, where the existing background ecological knowledge allows optimizing both the arrangement of the molecular research and the interpretation of its results (Davies et al, 2014;Stern et al, 2018).…”

Species detection and delineation in the marine planktonic diatoms Chaetoceros and Bacteriastrum through metabarcoding: making biological sense of haplotype diversity

“…The GoN harbours a rich chaetocerotacean flora that varies across the seasons and recurs over the years (Zingone and Sarno, ; Zingone et al ., ). It accommodates tropical, warm temperate and cold temperate species alike, each of them encountering its favourable period for growth, and most of them overcoming the unfavourable period as resting spores (Montresor et al ., ).…”

“…Our study site is the Long‐Term Ecological Research station MareChiara (LTER‐MC) in the Gulf of Naples (GoN; Mediterranean Sea). Phytoplankton diversity and its seasonal cycling have been studied there extensively since 1984 (Zingone et al ., ) and so has the chaetocerotacean diversity (Kooistra et al ., ; Gaonkar et al ., ). A first metabarcode survey carried out on eight sampling dates in 2011, using the V4 region as marker (Piredda et al ., ), revealed high chaetocerotacean abundance.…”

Combining Marine Ecology and Economy to Roadmap the Integrated Coastal Management: A Systematic Literature Review

“…To this latter respect, the presence of Long Term Ecological Research sites (LTER, [84]) in the waterfront of urbanized areas hosting open-water aquacultures, such as in the Gulf of Naples (Naples, Italy, [85]), guarantees the collection of data useful to track the passive transportation of HAB species, their demography and also the contribution of these organisms to the aquatic food webs [86][87][88]. These data can feed systems ecology by allowing the integration of ecosystem modelling into aquaculture management [89].…”