Diversity and temporal patterns of planktonic protist assemblages at a Mediterranean Long Term Ecological Research site.
We tracked temporal changes in protist diversity at the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) station MareChiara in the Gulf of Naples (Mediterranean Sea) on eight dates in 2011 using a metabarcoding approach. Illumina analysis of the V4 and V9 fragments of the 18S rDNA produced 869 522 and 1 410 071 sequences resulting in 6517 and 6519 OTUs, respectively. Marked compositional variations were recorded across the year, with less than 2% of OTUs shared among all samples and similar patterns for the two marker tags. Alveolata, Stramenopiles and Rhizaria were the most represented groups. A comparison with light microscopy data indicated an over-representation of Dinophyta in the sequence dataset, whereas Bacillariophyta showed comparable taxonomic patterns between sequence and light microscopy data. Shannon diversity values were stable from February to September, increasing thereafter with a peak in December. Community variance was mainly explained by seasonality (as temperature), trophic status (as chlorophyll a), and influence of coastal waters (as salinity). Overall, the background knowledge of the system provided a sound context for the result interpretation, showing that LTER sites provide an ideal setting for high-throughput sequencing (HTS) metabarcoding characterisation of protist assemblages and their relationships with environmental variations.
Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, Naples, Italy roberta.piredda@szn.it.
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Piredda
Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, Naples, Italy.|Institute of Biomembranes and Bioenergetics, National Research Council, Bari, Italy.
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Tomasino
Institute of Biomembranes and Bioenergetics, National Research Council, Bari, Italy.|Department of Biosciences, Biotechnologies and Biopharmaceutics, University of Bari, Italy.
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D'Erchia
Institute of Biomembranes and Bioenergetics, National Research Council, Bari, Italy.
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Manzari
Institute of Biomembranes and Bioenergetics, National Research Council, Bari, Italy.|Department of Biosciences, Biotechnologies and Biopharmaceutics, University of Bari, Italy.
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Pesole
Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, Naples, Italy.
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Montresor
Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, Naples, Italy.
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Kooistra
Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, Naples, Italy.
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Sarno
Department of Integrative Marine Ecology, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Villa Comunale, Naples, Italy.
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Zingone
D056893:Alveolata / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D044822:Biodiversity; D002734:Chlorophyll / Q000378:metabolism; D000077194:Chlorophyll A; D004463:Ecology; D008522:Mediterranean Sea; D010802:Phylogeny; D010933:Plankton / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism; D056901:Rhizaria / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D058009:Stramenopiles / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics
D002734:Chlorophyll; D000077194:Chlorophyll A
HTS; LTER; marine protists; metabarcoding; microbial eukaryote diversity; temporal variability