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General Session 2: Marine & estuarine biogeochemistry |
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Protistan diversity and activity in the South China Sea revealed by high throughput sequencing
GS2-50
Dapeng Xu* , State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Institute of Marine Microbes and Ecospheres, Xiamen University, China
Ran Li, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Institute of Marine Microbes and Ecospheres, Xiamen University, China
Chen Hu, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Institute of Marine Microbes and Ecospheres, Xiamen University, China
Ping Sun, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Coastal and Wetland Ecosystem, College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, China
Nianzhi Jiao, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Institute of Marine Microbes and Ecospheres, Xiamen University, China
Presenter Email: dapengxu@xmu.edu.cn
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| Protists (microbial eukaryotes) are composed of morphologically, genetically, and functionally diverse group of single-celled eukaryotes and act as primary producers, consumers, decomposers, parasites, and trophic links in aquatic food webs, thus play key roles in global biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, silica, and many other elements. Knowing their diversity and activity is key to understand their functions in the aquatic ecosystems. In the present study, protistan diversity and activity in the South China Sea, one of the largest tropical marginal seas, were studied using high throughput sequencing technique. Our study showed the depth oriented distribution pattern of major protistan assemblages and the presence of unexpected lineages in the deep sea. Our study also showed that the community structure of protists in the South China Sea was shaped by other environmental factors. The diversity of protistan assemblages yet to be found in the South China Sea seems tremendous and more efforts should be applied to fully appreciate their roles in the element cycling in the ocean. |
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