Patchy Distributions and Distinct Niche Partitioning of Mycoplankton Populations across a Nearshore to Open Ocean Gradient.

ABSTRACT: Evidence increasingly suggests planktonic fungi (or mycoplankton) play an important role in marine food webs and biogeochemical cycles. In order to better understand their ecological role and how oceanographic gradients from the coastal to open ocean shape the mycoplankton community, molecular approaches were used to study fungal dynamics along a repeatedly sampled, five-station transect beginning at the mouth of an estuary and continuing 87 km across the continental shelf to the oligotrophic waters at the boundary of the Sargasso Sea. Similar to patterns in chlorophyll a, fungal 18S rRNA gene abundance showed a sharp decrease from nearshore to offshore stations. While Shannon's diversity was not statistically different across the transect, nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS)

SUBMITTER: Duan Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8672894 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature