Picoeukaryotes are protist 3 µm belonging to a wide diversity of taxonomic
groups, and they are an important constituent of the ocean microbiota, performing
essential ecological roles in marine trophic chains and in nutrient and carbon budgets.
Despite this, the true extent of their diversity is currently unknown, and in the last
decade molecular surveys have uncovered a substantial number of previously unknown
groups from all taxonomic levels. No studies on this group have been done so
far on the Red Sea, a unique marine environment characterized by oligotrophic conditions
and high irradiance, salinity and water temperature. We sampled the surface
waters of a site near the northern Red Sea coast, and analyzed the picoeukaryotic
diversity through the construction of PCR clone libraries using the 18S ribosomal
gene. The community captured by our library is dominated by three main groups,
the alveolates (32%), chlorophytes (32%) and Stramenopiles (20.55%). Members of
Radiolaria, Cercozoans and Haptophyta were also found, although in low abundances.
Photosynthetic organisms are especially diverse and abundant in the sample, with heterotrophic
organism mostly composed by the mostly parasitic novel alveolates and bacterivorous stramenopiles. Novel clades were detected among the Novel Alveolates-
II and the photosynthetic stramenopiles taxa, which suggests that they may be part
of a number of groups unique to the basin and adapted to the high salinity and temperature
conditions. This is the first study done on the Red Sea focusing on the
diversity of the complete picoeukaryotic fraction, and provides a stepping stone in
the characterization of the picoeukaryotic component of the microbial diversity of the
basin.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:kaust.edu.sa/oai:repository.kaust.edu.sa:10754/224071 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Espinosa, Francisco Jose Acosta |
| Contributors | Stingl, Ulrich, Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering (BESE) Division, Ravasi, Timothy, Voolstra, Christian R. |
| Source Sets | King Abdullah University of Science and Technology |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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