Influence of Regional Oceanography and Hydrothermal Activity on Protist Diversity and Community Structure in the Okinawa
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MICROBIOLOGY OF AQUATIC SYSTEMS
Influence of Regional Oceanography and Hydrothermal Activity on Protist Diversity and Community Structure in the Okinawa Trough Margaret Mars Brisbin 1
&
Asa E. Conover 1,2 & Satoshi Mitarai 1
Received: 16 December 2019 / Accepted: 24 August 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Microbial eukaryotes (protists) contribute substantially to ecological functioning in marine ecosystems, but the relative importance of factors shaping protist diversity, such as environmental selection and dispersal, remains difficult to parse. Water masses of a back-arc basin with hydrothermal activity provide a unique opportunity for studying the effects of dispersal and environmental selection on protist communities. In this study, we used metabarcoding to characterize protist communities in the Okinawa Trough, a back-arc spreading basin containing at least twenty-five active hydrothermal vent fields. Water was sampled from four depths at fourteen stations spanning the length of the Okinawa Trough, including three sites influenced by nearby hydrothermal vent sites. While significant differences in community structure reflecting water depth were present, protist communities were mostly homogeneous horizontally. Protist communities in the bottom waters affected by hydrothermal activity were significantly different from communities in other bottom waters, suggesting that environmental factors can be especially important in shaping community composition under specific conditions. Amplicon sequence variants that were enriched in hydrothermally influenced bottom waters largely derived from cosmopolitan protists that were present, but rare, in other nearbottom samples, thus highlighting the importance of the rare biosphere. Keywords Protists . Diversity . Microbial oceanography . Hydrothermal vents . Plankton . Community structure
Introduction Microbial unicellular eukaryotes (protists) are important contributors to all marine ecosystems, from the sunlit surface waters [1] to the deep, dark bathypelagic [2]. Extensive phylogenetic and functional diversity exist among protists, especially in extreme environments like the deep sea and hydrothermal vents [3], but the factors influencing protist community structure remain difficult to parse [4, 5]. Physicochemical factors, such as temperature, light, and nutrient availability, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01583-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Margaret Mars Brisbin [email protected] 1
Marine Biophysics Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, 1919-1 Tancha, Onna-son, Okinawa 904-0412, Japan
2
Present address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA
have historically been regarded as major influences on microbial community structure. These factors vary most substantially by depth, and, corr
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