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Comparison of picoeukaryote community structures and their environmental relationships between summer and autumn in the southern Chukchi Sea

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Abstract

Picoeukaryotes constitute an important component of the living biomass of oceanic communities and play major roles in biogeochemical cycles. There are very few studies on picoeukaryotes found in the Chukchi Sea. This work shows the relationship between community distribution and composition of picoeukaryotes residing in water masses and physicochemical factors in the southern Chukchi Sea studied in both midsummer (July) and early autumn (September), 2012. Illumina 18S V4 rDNA metabarcoding were used as the main tool. In July, Mamiellophyceae, Dinophyceae, and Trebouxiophyceae were the main microbial classes, with Micromonas, Prasinoderma, Telonema, Amoebophrya, Bathycoccus, Picomonas, and Bolidomonas representing the main genera. In September, Trebouxiophyceae surpassed Dinophyceae and was the second main microbial class, with Micromonas, Prasinoderma, Bathycoccus, Bolidomonas, Telonema, Choricystis, and Diaphanoeca representing the main genera. Water mass was the primary factor determining the community composition and diversity of picoeukaryotes. Abundance of Bathycoccus was found to be highly correlated with Alaskan Coastal Water and that of Prasinoderma, Bolidomonas, and Diaphanoeca with Bering Seawater. Nitrate and phosphate content of water in midsummer and dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature in early autumn were the main factors that shaped the abundance of the picoeukaryote community.

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Abbreviations

ACW:

Alaskan Coastal Water

ANOVA:

Analysis of variance

BSW:

Summer Bering Sea Water

Chl a :

Chlorophyll a

DCA:

Detrended correspondence analysis

DO:

Dissolved oxygen

OTUs:

Operational taxonomic units

PCR:

Polymerase chain reaction

RDA:

Redundancy analysis

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41206189 and 41476173), Shanghai Natural Science Foundation (16ZR1439800), the Foreign Cooperation supported by CAAA (IC201307) and the Chinese Projects for Investigations and Assessments of the Arctic and Antarctic (CHINARE2012-16 for 04-03, 04-04 and 03-05). The data were issued by the Data-sharing Platform of Polar Science (http://www.chinare.org.cn) maintained by Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC) and Chinese National Arctic and Antarctic Data Center (CN-NADC).

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Zhang, F., He, J., Jin, H. et al. Comparison of picoeukaryote community structures and their environmental relationships between summer and autumn in the southern Chukchi Sea. Extremophiles 25, 235–248 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-021-01222-3

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