Microbial plankton occurrence database in the North American Arctic region: synthesis of recent diversity of potentially toxic and harmful algae – Code and Dataset

• Main Authors: Schiffrine, Nicolas, Dhifallah, Fatma, Dionne, Kaven, Poulin, Michel, Lessard, Sylvie, Rochon, André, Gosselin, Michel
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2024
• Subjects: phytoplankton; Arctic; occurrence; database; harmful algal species; biodiversity; Arctic Ocean; Climate change; Phytoplankton
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10557176

This repository contains both R code and a dataset associated with the article "Microbial plankton occurrence database in the North American Arctic region: synthesis of recent diversity of potentially toxic and harmful algae". The R code and data are provided for data processing, analysis, and visualization. The Arctic Ocean is currently undergoing significant transformations due to climate change, leading to profound changes in its microbial planktonic communities. These communities consist of a wide range of organisms, including photoautotrophic prokaryotes and eukaryotes, as well as heterotrophic, phagotrophic, and mixotrophic protistan species. Here, for simplicity, we refer to these single-celled species as phytoplankton. Within this diversity, potentially toxic and/or harmful algal species (hereafter abbreviated as “HA”) are of particular concern. These organisms have the potential to spread into Arctic waters, posing threats to both human and ecosystem health. Despite their importance, the spatial and temporal distribution of phytoplankton communities, including HA species, in the North American Arctic, remains poorly understood. To address this gap, we compiled and synthesized the largest possible body of data from different databases, individual published and unpublished datasets, and partitioned it into nine regions based on the Large Marine Ecosystem classification. Our dataset contains 385800 individual georeferenced data points and 18268 unique sampling events, revealing greater diversity than previously thought, with 1445 unique taxa. Heterokontophyta (which notably included diatoms) and Dinoflagellata were the most dominant phyla. Our results indicate distinct spatial patterns of diversity, with the highest diversity observed in Atlantic-influenced regions of the North American Arctic. For most of the HA species recorded in our database, no evidence was found for an increase in the northernmost latitude where HA species are observed over the years, meaning that there is no substantial spread of ...