Vertical gradients in species richness and community composition across the twilight zone in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre

Sommer, Stephanie A.; Woudenberg, Lauren Van; Lenz, Petra H.; Cepeda, Georgina Daniela; Goetze, Erica

doi:10.1111/mec.14286

Cited by 53 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Meroplankton taxa are primarily the larvae of benthic organisms, which are difficult to identify morphologically, leading to the increased diversity detected by metagenetic analysis. Although other metagenetic studies targeting the 18S region have reported cryptic diversity among meroplankton (Lindeque et al, 2013;Pearman et al, 2014;Sommer et al, 2017), the contribution of meroplankton to overall diversity was particularly high in the present study. For example, as many Polychaeta MOTUs were detected as calanoid MOTUs.…”

Section: Cryptic Zooplankton Diversitycontrasting

confidence: 38%

“…Metagenetic approaches provide a sensitive method for monitoring zooplankton diversity, as demonstrated in studies of zooplankton communities in the English Channel (Lindeque et al, 2013), tropical and subtropical Pacific (Hirai and Tsuda, 2015;Hirai et al, 2015a), station ALOHA (Sommer et al, 2017), Red Sea (Pearman et al, 2014;Pearman and Irigoien, 2015;Casas et al, 2017), Monterey Bay (Harvey et al, 2017), Canadian coastal areas (Chain et al, 2016), and Storm Bay (Clarke et al, 2017). Given the alignment of results generated from metagenetic and morphological methods, we conclude that metagenetic analysis was successfully used to monitor changes in zooplankton diversity and communities in the study area, and that this in turn corresponded with environmental changes, particularly water temperature.…”

Section: The Metagenetic Approach As a Tool For Monitoring Zooplanktomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although a high similarity threshold (e.g., 99%) is expected to be used when analyzing metazoan zooplankton (Mohrbeck et al, 2015), we instead used a comparatively low similarity threshold (97%), a technique recommended to prevent overestimations of diversity (Kunin et al, 2010) that is often used in metagenetic analyses of zooplankton using the 18S V9 region (Pearman et al, 2014;Casas et al, 2017). Additionally, we used a strict abundance threshold (eight minimum sequence reads), because rare MOTUs are not always reliable and lead to overestimations of diversity (Bokulich et al, 2013;Hirai et al, 2017b;Leray and Knowlton, 2017;Sommer et al, 2017). Indeed, an even stricter minimum threshold of 16 sequence reads would have identified 429 MOTUs, a number much higher than that detected morphologically.…”

Section: Cryptic Zooplankton Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To date, metagenetic techniques have been used to examine zooplankton communities over large spatial scales, and have accurately detected shifts in community compositions corresponding with changes in environmental conditions (Pearman et al, 2014;de Vargas et al, 2015;Hirai and Tsuda, 2015;Chain et al, 2016). Metagenetic techniques have also been applied to revealing zooplankton community structure and diversity at different sampling depths (Pearman and Irigoien, 2015;Sommer et al, 2017) and in different seasons (Casas et al, 2017), as well as to dietary analysis of zooplanktivorous fish . As the utility of metagenetic techniques has been demonstrated for various marine organisms (Aylagas et al, 2016;Danovaro et al, 2016), and as the method is not dependent on subtle morphological characters or the skill of taxonomists, it is expected to become a widespread tool in the rapid and effective monitoring of zooplankton communities and diversity (reviewed in Bucklin et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cryptic Zooplankton Diversity Revealed by a Metagenetic Approach to Monitoring Metazoan Communities in the Coastal Waters of the Okhotsk Sea, Northeastern Hokkaido

et al. 2017

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Monitoring zooplankton communities is important to understand dynamics in marine ecosystems. However, it is difficult to identify cryptic species and immature stages of zooplankton using morphological classification, which is time-consuming and requires high skill levels. Here, we conducted a metagenetic analysis of the 18S region in 101 zooplankton samples collected weekly throughout 2014 and 2015 at the Okhotsk Tower in Mombetsu, Hokkaido, Japan, and compared the results of this analysis with those provided by morphological analysis. The metagenetic analysis detected 561 molecular taxonomic units (MOTUs), whereas the morphological analysis detected 201 taxonomic groups. Zooplankton communities were dominated by copepods throughout the sampling period; however, non-copepod taxa, which comprised high proportions of both MOTUs (mean 51.1%) and sequence reads (mean 19.1%), were also important. Cryptic diversity detected by the metagenetic analysis was primarily driven by Copepoda and by the larvae of benthic taxa such as Bivalvia, Gastropoda, and Polychaeta. Community structure and diversity varied between periods of warm and cold water, indicating strong correlations with water temperature and thus seasonality. Furthermore, metagenetic analysis revealed detailed seasonal changes in dominant taxa, including larval stages of metazoans with high taxonomic resolutions; these included commercially important organisms such as Japanese scallops. The metagenetic analysis revealed that changes in both water mass and bentho-pelagic interactions sustain ecosystems rich in zooplankton diversity in this area. Metagenetic analysis provides novel insight into zooplankton diversity, and generates massive sequence data that may be used in future research; thus, it is considered an effective tool for monitoring zooplankton communities.

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Section: Cryptic Zooplankton Diversitycontrasting

confidence: 38%

Section: The Metagenetic Approach As a Tool For Monitoring Zooplanktomentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cryptic Zooplankton Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cryptic Zooplankton Diversity Revealed by a Metagenetic Approach to Monitoring Metazoan Communities in the Coastal Waters of the Okhotsk Sea, Northeastern Hokkaido

et al. 2017

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“…A total of 1,659 OTUs from approximately three million reads thus indicates the hitherto hidden diversity of copepods. Previously, over 5,000 copepod OTUs have been reported in the epipelagic layer of the global oceans [3], and 1,806 copepod OTUs have been reported from 0–1,500 m in the North Pacific subtropical gyre [32]. Differences in total OTU numbers are possibly related to different sampling and experimental methods, bioinformatic strategies, and spatial coverage of samples.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-scale metabarcoding analysis of epipelagic and mesopelagic copepods in the Pacific

Hirai

Tachibana

Tsuda

2020

Preprint

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AbstractA clear insight into large-scale community structure of planktonic copepods is critical to understanding mechanisms controlling diversity and biogeography of marine taxa, owing to their high abundance, ubiquity, and sensitivity to environmental changes. Here, we applied a 28S metabarcoding approach to large-scale communities of epipelagic and mesopelagic copepods at 70 stations across the Pacific Ocean and three stations in the Arctic Ocean. Major patterns of community structure and diversity, influenced by water mass structures, agreed with results from previous morphology-based studies. However, large-scale metabarcoding approach could detected community changes even under stable environmental conditions, including changes in the north/south subtropical gyres and east/west areas within each subtropical gyre. There were strong effects of epipelagic environment on mesopelagic communities, and community subdivisions were observed in the environmentally-stable mesopelagic layer. In each sampling station, higher operational taxonomic unit (OTU) numbers and lower phylogenetic diversity were observed in the mesopelagic layer than in the epipelagic layer, indicating a recent rapid increase of species numbers in the mesopelagic layer. The phylogenetic analysis utilizing representative sequences of OTUs revealed trends of recent emergence of cold-water OTUs mainly distributed at high latitudes with low water temperatures. Conversely, high diversity of copepods at low latitudes was suggested to have been formed through long evolutionary history under high water temperature. The metabarcoding results suggest that evolutionary processes have strong impacts on current patterns of copepod diversity, and support the “out of the tropics” theory explaining latitudinal diversity gradients of copepods. Both diversity patterns in epipelagic and mesopelagic showed high correlations to sea surface temperature; thus, predicted global warming may have a significant impact on copepod diversity in both layers.Author SummaryMarine planktonic copepods are highly dominant and diverse, and revealing their community structure and diversity is important to understanding marine ecosystems. We used molecular-based metabarcoding to reveal a total of 205 copepod communities in the ‘sunlight’ or epipelagic layer (0– 200 m) and the ‘twilight’ or mesopelagic layer (200–500 m and 500–1,000 m), mainly in the Pacific Ocean (data for 70 stations), but also in the Arctic Ocean (data for three stations). Different copepod communities were found in each geographical region with different environmental conditions, including tropical, subtropical, transition, Kuroshio Current, California Current, subarctic and arctic areas. The metabarcoding method sensitively detected small changes of copepod community even in environmentally-stable subtropical ocean systems and the mesopelagic layer. A high diversity of copepods was detected at low latitudes, and copepod diversity was higher in the mesopelagic layer than in the epipelagic layer in each area. These diversity patterns were influenced by both evolutionary history and present environmental conditions. The copepod community in the mesopelagic layer was strongly influenced by environmental conditions in the epipelagic layer. Thus, predicted climate changes may affect marine ecosystems not only in the epipelagic layer but also in the mesopelagic layer.

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Divergent patterns of zooplankton connectivity in the epipelagic and mesopelagic zones of the eastern North Pacific

Matthews,

Blanco‐Bercial

2023

Ecology and Evolution

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Due to historical under‐sampling of the deep ocean, the distributional ranges of mesopelagic zooplankton are not well documented, leading to uncertainty about the mechanisms that shape midwater zooplankton community composition. Using a combination of DNA metabarcoding (18S‐V4 and mtCOI) and trait‐based analysis, we characterized zooplankton diversity and community composition in the upper 1000 m of the northeast Pacific Ocean. We tested whether the North Pacific Transition Zone is a biogeographic boundary region for mesopelagic zooplankton. We also tested whether zooplankton taxa occupying different vertical habitats and exhibiting different ecological traits differed in the ranges of temperature, Chl‐a, and dissolved oxygen conditions inhabited. The depth of the maximum taxonomic richness deepened with increasing latitude in the North Pacific. Community similarity in the mesopelagic zone also increased in comparison with the epipelagic zone, and no evidence was found for a biogeographic boundary between previously delineated mesopelagic biogeochemical provinces. Epipelagic zooplankton exhibited broader temperature and Chl‐a ranges than mesopelagic taxa. Within the epipelagic, taxa with broader temperature and Chl‐a ranges also had broader distributional ranges. However, mesopelagic taxa were distributed across wider dissolved oxygen ranges, and within the mesopelagic, only oxygen ranges covaried with distributional ranges. Environmental and distributional ranges also varied among traits, both for epipelagic taxa and mesopelagic taxa. The strongest differences in both environmental and distributional ranges were observed for taxa with or without diel vertical migration behavior. Our results suggest that species traits can influence the differential effects of physical dispersal and environmental selection in shaping biogeographic distributions.

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Vertical gradients in species richness and community composition across the twilight zone in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre

Cited by 53 publications

References 91 publications

Cryptic Zooplankton Diversity Revealed by a Metagenetic Approach to Monitoring Metazoan Communities in the Coastal Waters of the Okhotsk Sea, Northeastern Hokkaido

Cryptic Zooplankton Diversity Revealed by a Metagenetic Approach to Monitoring Metazoan Communities in the Coastal Waters of the Okhotsk Sea, Northeastern Hokkaido

Large-scale metabarcoding analysis of epipelagic and mesopelagic copepods in the Pacific

Divergent patterns of zooplankton connectivity in the epipelagic and mesopelagic zones of the eastern North Pacific

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