Composition and spatial-temporal dynamics of phytoplankton community shaped by environmental selection and interactions in the Jiaozhou Bay

Phytoplankton community structure in the Western Subarctic Gyre of the Pacific Ocean during summer determined by a combined approach of HPLC-pigment CHEMTAX and metabarcoding sequencing

“…Dinoflagellates were the dominant phytoplankton assemblages in the study area, according to metabarcoding. Their abundance was comparable with those reported in temperate areas of the northwestern Pacific (Huang et al, 2020;Wu et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2022) and much lower than those in tropical regions, such as the South China Sea (Wang et al, 2022) and the Western Pacific seamount regions (Xu et al, 2021). By comparison, haptophytes were the minor component (0.53% of phytoplankton) in the WSG, but they occupied a relatively high proportion of phytoplankton in the South China Sea (Wang et al, 2022) and the temperate regions of the northwest Pacific controlled by the Kuroshio current (Wu et al, 2020).…”

“…The geographic patterns of phytoplankton assemblages are governed by spatial and environmental factors, especially temperature, on a global scale (Villar et al, 2015). For regional areas, the distribution of phytoplankton community compositions is also shaped by different processes, such as ocean currents, water column depths and environmental stresses (e.g., nutrient and light limitation) (Paerl et al, 2018;Wu et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2022). Considering phytoplankton's ability to rapidly adapt to environmental changes, these can be used as indicators of marine environmental changes (Paerl et al, 2018).…”

“…In particular, DNA metabarcoding methods based on molecular marker amplification and high-throughput sequencing approaches have been rapidly developed in recent years (Gong et al, 2020). In numerous studies, the metabarcoding method has been applied widely to investigate phytoplankton communities in various seas, such as the northwestern Pacific Ocean (Wu et al, 2020), South China Sea (Wang et al, 2022), Neuse River Estuary (Gong et al, 2020), and Jiaozhou Bay (Liu et al, 2022). Those studies showed that environmental factors (i.e., environmental selection) and geographical distance (i.e., dispersal limitation) are important factors that shape the phytoplankton community in the ocean, even on a small scale (Wu et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2022).…”

“…Those studies showed that environmental factors (i.e., environmental selection) and geographical distance (i.e., dispersal limitation) are important factors that shape the phytoplankton community in the ocean, even on a small scale (Wu et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2022). In particular, metabarcoding has an extraordinary advantage in distinguishing harmful and/or toxic algal species, some of which are easily missed by microscopic methods (Liu et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2022). Consequently, the metabarcoding approach has expanded our understanding of the relationship between environmental factors and phytoplankton population diversity in the marine environment.…”

“…Dinoflagellates were more represented when the metabarcoding approach was used compared with CHEMTAX. This might be ascribed to the fact that (1) some dinoflagellates could not be counted by the CHEMTAX method due to a lack of Peridinin (Mackey et al, 1996) and (2) dinoflagellates contain larger genome sizes and higher 18S gene copy numbers than other phytoplankton assemblages, especially diatoms (Lin, 2011;Gong and Marchetti, 2019;Liu et al, 2022). Similarly, Wang et al (2022) showed that metabarcoding overestimated the contribution of dinoflagellates to total phytoplankton compared with The distribution and relative abundance of 16 HAB-forming species in the surface seawater of the Northwest Pacific Ocean.…”