Global drivers of eukaryotic plankton biogeography in the sunlit ocean

Abstract

Circulating in the sunlit ocean Marine plankton, which lie at the base of oceanic food chains, drive global biogeochemical fluxes, and knowledge of their distribution is key to understanding the response of oceans to environmental changes. Sommeria-Klein et al . explored the patterns and drivers of biogeography in eukaryotic plankton using a probabilistic model of taxon co-occurrence to compare the biogeography of 70 major groups, including a variety of size fractions and ecologies. The analysis is based on metabarcoding data from 129 stations in several oceanic provinces worldwide. Samples are from sunlit surface waters and, in about half of the stations, from the deep chlorophyll maximum. An essential message is that small phototrophs distribute mostly by latitude and bigger consumers are partitioned by ocean basin. —CA