Metagenomic Analysis of Microbial 18s Eukaryotes Communities and Environmental factors in the Western Antarctic Peninsula waters during Austral Summers

Little is known about the environmental factors that impact eukaryotic microbial populations in the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Metagenomic and environmental data have been collected over the course of three consecutive austral summers in the Western Antarctic Peninsula off Palmer Station. More tha...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Siman-Tov, Idan
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: SJSU ScholarWorks 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_projects/1189
https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.awqc-2w7a
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/context/etd_projects/article/2189/viewcontent/siman_tov_idan.pdf
Description
Summary:Little is known about the environmental factors that impact eukaryotic microbial populations in the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Metagenomic and environmental data have been collected over the course of three consecutive austral summers in the Western Antarctic Peninsula off Palmer Station. More than 13 million 18S rRNA eukaryotic sequences have been taxonomically identified and categorized from the Antarctic water samples collected. Here we will investigate the environmental factors that affect eukaryotic organism populations, as well as possible indicator species that could provide insight as to the status of other eukaryotic species. Due to climate change, understanding these factors and identifying status indicating species is becoming increasingly important in understanding microbial systems, and to inform future research of Antarctic ecosystems and environmental conditions. We identified several groupings of correlated taxonomic operational units. Additionally, we found that Stramenopiles.Diatomea.ME-Euk-FW10, an uncultured diatom with a large population presence, had a particularly strong correlation to temperature.