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The community composition of diatom resting stages in sediments of the northern Bering Sea in 2017 and 2018: the relationship to the interannual changes in the extent of the sea ice

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Abstract

In the Bering Sea shelf, annual changes in the sea ice extent are large. In this study, we compare the viable diatom resting stages in sediments during the summer of 2017 when the sea ice retreat was late and 2018 when the sea ice retreat was early. South of St. Lawrence Island, the germinating cell number was 10–100 times greater in 2018 than it was in 2017. The taxonomic composition also showed large annual differences: Fragilariopsis/Fossula spp., which are ice algae species, were abundant in 2017, but Thalassiosira spp. dominated in 2018. Satellite observations confirmed that sea ice diminished before the ice-edge bloom in 2018, but sea ice remained until the ice-edge bloom in 2017. This study shows that the community composition of viable diatom resting stages is largely affected by the timing of the sea ice retreat.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the captain, officers, crew and researchers on board the T/S Oshoro-Maru, Hokkaido University, for their great efforts during the field sampling. We thank Toru Hirawake, chief scientist of the cruises. This work was conducted by the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability (ArCS) project. Philip Alatalo of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution provided comments which improved the text. We also acknowledge the JAXA Earth Observation Research Center and NASA Godard Space Flight Center for providing AMSR2 SIC data and Aqua-MODIS chlorophyll-a concentration data, respectively. Part of this study was supported through a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research 17H01483 (A), 16H02947 (B), 19H03037 (B), 15KK0268 (Joint International Research) and 18K14506 (Early-Career Scientists) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Marine Biology, Graduate School of Fisheries Sciences, Hokkaido University, 3-1-1 Minato-cho, Hakodate, Hokkaido, 041-8611, Japan

    Yuri Fukai, Kohei Matsuno & Atsushi Yamaguchi

  2. Arctic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Kita-21 Nishi-11 Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido, 001-0021, Japan

    Kohei Matsuno & Atsushi Yamaguchi

  3. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, 2-15 Natsushima-cho, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, 237-0061, Japan

    Amane Fujiwara

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  1. Yuri Fukai
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  2. Kohei Matsuno
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  3. Amane Fujiwara
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  4. Atsushi Yamaguchi
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Correspondence to Yuri Fukai.

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Fukai, Y., Matsuno, K., Fujiwara, A. et al. The community composition of diatom resting stages in sediments of the northern Bering Sea in 2017 and 2018: the relationship to the interannual changes in the extent of the sea ice. Polar Biol 42, 1915–1922 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-019-02552-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-019-02552-x

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