Biological Sciences Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California, USA.
Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA.
Environ Microbiol Rep. 2022 Dec;14(6):897-906. doi: 10.1111/1758-2229.13116. Epub 2022 Sep 7.
New technologies enable the opportunity to improve our monitoring and understanding of marine phytoplankton communities. However, careful consideration for how different methodological approaches, or 'lenses', influence our interpretation of phytoplankton ecology is important, particularly when drawing conclusions about change over time or space. Using both high-throughput 18S rRNA gene sequencing and microscopy, we explored how phytoplankton community structure varied over the course of a year within a nearshore semi-enclosed coastal embayment along the Central Coast of California. The seasonal shift in the relative community dominance (i.e., diatom vs. dinoflagellate dominance) was captured in the microscopy results but not effectively captured in the molecular-based findings. However, the molecular approach explained more of the variability in composition across seasons relative to the microscopy approach. Temporal dynamics of specific bloom-forming taxa also differed between the molecular and microscopy results. Overall, the observed differences between the molecular- and microscopy-derived characterization of phytoplankton dynamics suggest that the approaches are best suited to answer different research questions. Moreover, the approaches complement each other for a more comprehensive perspective of a coastal phytoplankton ecosystem. Therefore, identifying the biases of each approach within natural communities is necessary to effectively and accurately characterize phytoplankton communities.
新技术为我们提供了改善海洋浮游植物群落监测和理解的机会。然而，重要的是要仔细考虑不同的方法途径（或“视角”）如何影响我们对浮游植物生态学的解释，特别是在得出关于时间或空间变化的结论时。本研究使用高通量 18S rRNA 基因测序和显微镜技术，探索了加利福尼亚州中部海岸近岸半封闭沿海港湾内浮游植物群落结构在一年中的变化情况。显微镜结果捕捉到了浮游植物群落相对优势度（即硅藻与甲藻的优势度）的季节性变化，但分子方法的结果并没有有效地捕捉到这一点。然而，与显微镜方法相比，分子方法可以更好地解释不同季节之间组成的可变性。特定的浮游植物生物量形成类群的时间动态在分子和显微镜结果之间也存在差异。总体而言，浮游植物动态的分子和显微镜衍生特征之间的观察到的差异表明，这些方法最适合回答不同的研究问题。此外，这些方法相互补充，有助于更全面地了解沿海浮游植物生态系统。因此，需要确定每种方法在自然群落中的偏差，以有效地、准确地描述浮游植物群落。
