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Marine Protists pp 3–21Cite as

Protistan Diversity in Environmental Molecular Surveys

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Abstract

Marine protists include a heterogeneous collection of phototrophic and heterotrophic unicells covering a wide cell size range and belonging to virtually all eukaryotic lineages. They have been identified by microscopy, which allows a reasonable level of resolution for the larger specimens but is clearly insufficient for the smallest ones. Moreover, as occurs with their prokaryotic counterparts, a large majority of marine protists are uncultivable. Molecular tools have revolutionized field studies of protists’ diversity, allowing exhaustive species inventories especially when combined with high-throughput sequencing technologies. These surveys have shown that natural assemblages are very diverse, including novel phylogenetic lineages that had remained uncharacterized despite their evident ecological significance. The extent of diversity and novelty is largest within the assemblage of the smallest protists, the picoeukaryotes. The information gathered by sequencing phylogenetic marker genes has been combined with an array of complementary molecular methods such as fingerprinting tools to study diversity changes along spatial and temporal gradients, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to put a face on the novel lineages and perform specific cell counts, and metagenomics to explore ecological adaptations on the basis of the genetic potential. This chapter presents an overview of the molecular approaches currently applied to gain knowledge on the diversity and function of protists in the environment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Biology and Oceanography, Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37-49, E-08003, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

    Ramon Massana

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  1. Ramon Massana
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Correspondence to Ramon Massana .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Takehara Marine Science Station, Setouchi Field Science Center, Graduate School of Biosphere Science, Hiroshima University, Takehara, Hiroshima, Japan

    Susumu Ohtsuka

  2. Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

    Toshinobu Suzaki

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan

    Takeo Horiguchi

  4. Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

    Noritoshi Suzuki

  5. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifi que – CNRS, University Pierre and Marie Curie – UPMC Station Biologique de Roscoff, Roscoff, France

    Fabrice Not

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Massana, R. (2015). Protistan Diversity in Environmental Molecular Surveys. In: Ohtsuka, S., Suzaki, T., Horiguchi, T., Suzuki, N., Not, F. (eds) Marine Protists. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55130-0_1

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