Biology Department, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford St, Halifax, NS, B3H 4J1, Canada.
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, 24105, Kiel, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 29;12(1):13078. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-17313-w.
The planktonic diversity throughout the oceans is vital to ecosystem functioning and linked to environmental change. Plankton monitoring tools have advanced considerably with high-throughput in-situ digital cameras and genomic sequencing, opening new challenges for high-frequency observations of community composition, structure, and species discovery. Here, we combine multi-marker metabarcoding based on nuclear 18S (V4) and plastidial 16S (V4-V5) rRNA gene amplicons with a digital in-line holographic microscope to provide a synoptic diversity survey of eukaryotic plankton along the Newfoundland Shelf (Canada) during the winter transition phase of the North Atlantic bloom phenomenon. Metabarcoding revealed a rich eukaryotic diversity unidentifiable in the imaging samples, confirming the presence of ecologically important saprophytic protists which were unclassifiable in matching images, and detecting important groups unobserved or taxonomically unresolved during similar sequencing campaigns in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. In turn, imaging analysis provided quantitative observations of widely prevalent plankton from every trophic level. Despite contrasting plankton compositions portrayed by each sampling method, both capture broad spatial differences between the northern and southern sectors of the Newfoundland Shelf and suggest complementary estimations of important features in eukaryotic assemblages. Future tasks will involve standardizing digital imaging and metabarcoding for wider use and consistent, comparable ocean observations.
浮游生物多样性对生态系统功能至关重要，并与环境变化有关。浮游生物监测工具随着高通量原位数字相机和基因组测序技术的发展取得了显著进展，为群落组成、结构和物种发现的高频观测带来了新的挑战。在这里，我们结合基于核 18S（V4）和质体 16S（V4-V5）rRNA 基因扩增子的多标记代谢组学，并利用数字在线全息显微镜，对北大西洋 bloom 现象冬季过渡阶段纽芬兰架（加拿大）的真核浮游生物进行了概述性多样性调查。代谢组学揭示了丰富的真核生物多样性，在成像样本中无法识别，证实了生态上重要的腐生原生生物的存在，这些生物在匹配的图像中无法分类，并且在类似的西北大西洋测序活动中检测到了重要的未观察到或分类学上未解决的群体。反过来，成像分析提供了对来自各个营养级的广泛流行浮游生物的定量观察。尽管两种采样方法描绘的浮游生物组成截然不同，但都捕捉到了纽芬兰架北部和南部区域之间的广泛空间差异，并对真核生物组合中的重要特征进行了互补估计。未来的任务将涉及标准化数字成像和代谢组学，以实现更广泛的应用和一致、可比的海洋观测。
