Dataset Information

Bacterioplankton community shifts associated with epipelagic and mesopelagic waters in the Southern Ocean.

ABSTRACT: The Southern Ocean is among the least explored marine environments on Earth, and still little is known about regional and vertical variability in the diversity of Antarctic marine prokaryotes. In this study, the bacterioplankton community in both epipelagic and mesopelagic waters was assessed at two adjacent stations by high-throughput sequencing and quantitative PCR. Water temperature was significantly higher in the superficial photic zone, while higher salinity and dissolved oxygen were recorded in the deeper water layers. The highest abundance of the bacterioplankton was found at a depth of 75 m, corresponding to the deep chlorophyll maximum layer. Both Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria were the most abundant taxa throughout the water column, while more sequences affiliated to Cyanobacteria and unclassified bacteria were identified from surface and the deepest waters, respectively. Temperature was the most significant environmental variable affecting the bacterial community structure. The bacterial community composition displayed significant differences at the epipelagic layers between two stations, whereas those in the mesopelagic waters were more similar to each other. Our results indicated that the epipelagic bacterioplankton might be dominated by short-term environmental variable conditions, whereas the mesopelagic communities appeared to be structured by longer water-mass residence time and relative stable environmental factors.

SUBMITTER: Yu Z

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4530437 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Bacterioplankton community shifts associated with epipelagic and mesopelagic waters in the Southern Ocean.

Yu Zheng Z Yang Jun J Liu Lemian L Zhang Wenjing W Amalfitano Stefano S

Scientific reports 20150810

The Southern Ocean is among the least explored marine environments on Earth, and still little is known about regional and vertical variability in the diversity of Antarctic marine prokaryotes. In this study, the bacterioplankton community in both epipelagic and mesopelagic waters was assessed at two adjacent stations by high-throughput sequencing and quantitative PCR. Water temperature was significantly higher in the superficial photic zone, while higher salinity and dissolved oxygen were record ...[more]

PMID: 26256889

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Project description:A clear insight into the large-scale community structure of planktonic copepods is critical to understanding the mechanisms controlling diversity and biogeography of marine taxa in terms of their high abundance, ubiquity, and sensitivity to environmental changes. Here, we applied a 28S metabarcoding approach to large-scale communities of epipelagic and mesopelagic copepods at 70 stations across the Pacific Ocean and three stations in the Arctic Ocean. Major patterns of community structure and diversity, influenced by water mass structures, agreed with results from previous morphology-based studies. However, a large-scale metabarcoding approach could detect community changes even under stable environmental conditions, including changes in the north/south subtropical gyres and east/west areas within each subtropical gyre. There were strong effects of the epipelagic environment on mesopelagic communities, and community subdivisions were observed in the environmentally stable mesopelagic layer. In each sampling station, higher operational taxonomic unit (OTU) numbers and lower phylogenetic diversity were observed in the mesopelagic layer than in the epipelagic layer, indicating a recent rapid increase in species numbers in the mesopelagic layer. The phylogenetic analysis utilizing representative sequences of OTUs revealed trends of recent emergence of cold-water OTUs, which are mainly distributed at high latitudes with low water temperatures. Conversely, the high diversity of copepods at low latitudes was suggested to have been formed through long evolution under high water temperature conditions. The metabarcoding results suggest that evolutionary processes have strong impacts on current patterns of copepod diversity, and support the "out of the tropics" theory explaining latitudinal diversity gradients of copepods. Diversity patterns in both epipelagic and mesopelagic copepods was highly correlated to sea surface temperature; thus, predicted global warming may have a significant impact on copepod diversity in both layers.

Dataset Information

Bacterioplankton community shifts associated with epipelagic and mesopelagic waters in the Southern Ocean.

Publications

Bacterioplankton community shifts associated with epipelagic and mesopelagic waters in the Southern Ocean.

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