Diversitet, taksonomi og utbredelse av marine protister i et Arktis i endring.

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2017

End date

12/31/2021

Budget

809,275 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Microalgae and protozoa (protists) are the basis for the production of higher trophic levels in the marine food web, and thus for the fisheries. Yet the Arctic protist community contains a vast unknown diversity and many of the described species are poorly known and circumscribed. We lack common references for precise identification of protists in the Pan-Arctic Ocean. This impedes our possibility to detect future changes in biodiversity and distribution, as well as changes in ecosystem structure, dynamics and functioning. In the project we describe the protist diversity and their spatial and temporal distribution in the Arctic Ocean by combining high-resolution microscopy with molecular methods. New cultured strains and single cells isolated from natural samples have been genetically and morphologically characterised. The new DNA reference sequences obtained enable a more precise identification from the large amount of genetic information that has been produced by environmental sequencing and metabarcoding in recent years. We have identified and described species that are poorly known and described several novel species. We provide have further developed tools needed for future surveys and monitoring of marine ecosystems in the Arctic. A web-based Pan-Arctic flora/fauna of marine protists is now under production, as well as improved DNA reference sequence databases for metabarcoding, improved methods to obtain DNA sequences from single cells and improved methods for electron microscopy observations of protists. We have combined molecular and microscopy data to elucidate how the protist community composition is related to environmental factors. This will increase our understanding on how plankton community structure and function may shift due to climate change.