Protistan diversity estimates based on 18S rDNA from seawater incubations in the Western North Atlantic.

摘要: Abstract. Cloning/sequencing and fragment analysis of ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) are becoming increasingly common methods for the identification microbial taxa. Sequences these provide many additional taxonomic characters species that otherwise have few distinctive morphological features, or require involved microscopy laboratory culture testing. These same approaches now being applied with great success in ecological studies natural communities microorganisms. Extensive information on composition assemblages is amassed at a rapid pace through genetic analyses environmental samples comparison resulting well-established (and rapidly growing) public databases. We examined eukaryote diversity seawater sample from coastal western North Atlantic Ocean using two molecular biological approaches: cloning sequencing rRNA by terminal restriction length polymorphism (T-RFLP) method. A simple experiment was carried out to examine changes overall (largely protistan) (phylotype diversity) assemblage when placed container incubated ambient light temperature 72 h. Containment resulted relatively minor (species richness) obtained either method three time points (time-zero, time-24 h, time-72 h). However, substantial dominance particular phylotypes took place between sampling times. Only 18% total number observed study were all points, while 65% (108 165) only single point (54 unique initially, 37 more 24 h, 17 72 h). The results this indicate high protistan taxa existed original very low abundance, thus not initial characterization community structure. significant shifts taxa, enabling presence previously unobserved be documented after 24 72 h incubation.