Hidden genomic diversity drives niche partitioning in a cosmopolitan eukaryotic picophytoplankton.

ABSTRACT: Marine eukaryotic phytoplankton are fundamental to the marine food web, yet the lack of reference genomes or just a single genome representing a taxon has led to an underestimation of their taxonomic, adaptive, and functional diversity. Here, we integrated strain isolation with metagenomic binning to recover genomes from the cosmopolitan picophytoplankton genus Bathycoccus, traditionally considered monospecific. Our recovery and analysis of 37 Bathycoccus genomes delineated their global genomic diversity and established four evolutionary clades (BI, BII, BIII, BIV). Our metagenomic abundance survey revealed well-differentiated ecological niches and distinct biogeographic distributions for each clade, predominantly shaped by temperature, salinity, and nutrient availability. Comparative geno

SUBMITTER: Xu Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11409870 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature