Eukaryotic plankton diversity in the sunlit ocean

Vargas, Colomban de ... et. al.-- 11 pages, 7 figures, supplementary materials www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/1261605/suppl/DC1
Marine plankton support global biological and geochemical processes. Surveys of their biodiversity have hitherto been geographically restricted and have not accounted for the full range of plankton size. We assessed eukaryotic diversity from 334 size-fractionated photic-zone plankton communities collected across tropical and temperate oceans during the circumglobal Tara Oceans expedition. We analyzed 18S ribosomal DNA sequences across the intermediate plankton-size spectrum from the smallest unicellular eukaryotes (protists, >0.8 micrometers) to small animals of a few millimeters. Eukaryotic ribosomal diversity saturated at ∼150,000 operational taxonomic units, about one-third of which could not be assigned to known eukaryotic groups. Diversity emerged at all taxonomic levels, both within the groups comprising the ∼11,200 cataloged morphospecies of eukaryotic plankton and among twice as many other deep-branching lineages of unappreciated importance in plankton ecology studies. Most eukaryotic plankton biodiversity belonged to heterotrophic protistan groups, particularly those known to be parasites or symbiotic hosts. © 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved
We thank the following people and sponsors for their commitment: CNRS (in particular, the GDR3280); EMBL; Genoscope/CEA; UPMC; VIB; Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn; UNIMIB; Rega Institute; KU Leuven; Fund for Scientific Research – The French Ministry of Research, the French Government “Investissements d’Avenir” programmes OCEANOMICS (ANR-11-BTBR-0008), FRANCE GENOMIQUE (ANR-10-INBS-09-08), and MEMO LIFE (ANR-10-LABX-54); PSL* Research University (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02); ANR (projects POSEIDON/ANR-09-BLAN-0348, PROMETHEUS/ANR-09-PCSGENM-217, PHYTBACK/ANR-2010-1709-01, and TARA-GIRUS/ANR-09-PCS-GENM-218); EU FP7 (MicroB3/No.287589, IHMS/HEALTH-F4-2010-261376); European Research Council Advanced Grant Awards to C. Bowler (Diatomite:294823); Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant 3790 to M.B.S.; Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grant CGL2011-26848/BOS MicroOcean PANGENOMICS and TANIT (CONES 2010-0036) grant from the Agency for Administration of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) to S.G.A.; and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI grant 26430184 to H.O. We also thank the following for their support and commitment: A. Bourgois, E. Bourgois, R. Troublé, Région Bretagne, G. Ricono, the Veolia Environment Foundation, Lorient Agglomération, World Courier, Illumina, the Electricité de France Foundation, Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Biodiversité, the Prince Albert II de Monaco Foundation, and the Tara schooner and its captains and crew. We thank MERCATORCORIOLIS and ACRI-ST for providing daily satellite data during the expedition. We are also grateful to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for supporting the expedition and to the countries who granted sampling permissions. Tara Oceans would not exist without continuous support from 23 institutes (http://oceans.taraexpeditions.org)