Culturable diversity of Arctic phytoplankton during pack ice melting

Massive phytoplankton blooms develop at the Arctic ice edge, sometimes extending far under the pack ice. An extensive culturing effort was conducted before and during a phytoplankton bloom in Baffin Bay between April and July 2016. Different isolation strategies were applied, including flow cytometr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene
Main Authors: Catherine Gérikas Ribeiro, Adriana Lopes dos Santos, Priscillia Gourvil, Florence Le Gall, Dominique Marie, Margot Tragin, Ian Probert, Daniel Vaulot
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: BioOne 2020
Subjects:
arctic diatoms
arctic flagellates
isolation techniques
18s rrna
roscoff culture collection
sympagic phytoplankton communities
envir
geo
Arctic
Baffin Bay
Baffin
Phytoplankton
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.401
https://doaj.org/article/d97e427755e24d1cac91e66c3d9e1d4c
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Summary:Massive phytoplankton blooms develop at the Arctic ice edge, sometimes extending far under the pack ice. An extensive culturing effort was conducted before and during a phytoplankton bloom in Baffin Bay between April and July 2016. Different isolation strategies were applied, including flow cytometry cell sorting, manual single cell pipetting, and serial dilution. Although all three techniques yielded the most common organisms, each technique retrieved specific taxa, highlighting the importance of using several methods to maximize the number and diversity of isolated strains. More than 1,000 cultures were obtained, characterized by 18S rRNA sequencing and optical microscopy, and de-replicated to a subset of 276 strains presented in this work. Strains grouped into 57 phylotypes defined by 100% 18S rRNA sequence similarity. These phylotypes spread across five divisions: Heterokontophyta, Chlorophyta, Cryptophyta, Haptophyta and Dinophyta. Diatoms were the most abundant group (193 strains), mostly represented by the genera 'Chaetoceros and Attheya'. The genera 'Baffinella and Pyramimonas' were the most abundant non-diatom nanoplankton strains, while 'Micromonas polaris' dominated the picoplankton. Diversity at the class level was higher during the peak of the bloom. Potentially new species were isolated, in particular within the genera 'Navicula, Nitzschia, Coscinodiscus, Thalassiosira, Pyramimonas, Mantoniella and Isochrysis'. Culturing efforts such as this one highlight the unexplored eukaryotic plankton diversity in the Arctic and provide a large number of strains for analyzing physiological and metabolic impacts in this changing environment.

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