Latitudinal gradients and ocean fronts strongly influence protist communities in the southern Pacific Ocean

Sturm, D, Morton, P, Langer, G, Balch, WM and Wheeler, G 2024 Latitudinal gradients and ocean fronts strongly influence protist communities in the southern Pacific Ocean. FEMS Microbiology Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiae137

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Abstract/Summary

Protist communities in the southern Pacific Ocean make a major contribution to global biogeochemical cycling, but remain understudied due to their remote location. We therefore have limited understanding of how large-scale physical gradients (e.g. temperature) and mesoscale oceanographic features (e.g. fronts) influence microeukaryote diversity in this region. We performed a high-resolution examination of protist communities along a latitudinal transect (>3000 km) at 150°W in the central southern Pacific Ocean that encompassed major frontal regions, including the sub-tropical front (STF), the sub-Antarctic front (SAF), and the polar front (PF). We identified distinct microbial communities along the transect that were primarily delineated by the positions of the STF and PF. Some taxa were not constricted by these environmental boundaries and were able to span frontal regions, such as the colonial haptophyte Phaeocystis. Our findings also support the presence of a Latitudinal Diversity Gradient (LDG) of decreasing diversity of the protist community with increasing latitude, although some individual taxa, notably the diatoms, do not adhere to this rule. Our findings show that oceanographic features and large-scale physical gradients have important impacts on marine protist communities in the southern Pacific Ocean that are likely to strongly influence their response to future environmental change

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Additional Keywords:	diversity, fronts, Pacific Ocean, Phaeocystis, protist
Subjects:	Marine Sciences
Divisions:	Marine Biological Association of the UK > Marine Microbiome
Depositing User:	Ms Kristina Hixon
Date made live:	09 Dec 2024 10:23
Last Modified:	09 Dec 2024 10:23
URI:	https://plymsea.ac.uk/id/eprint/10338

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