Changing Views of Arctic Protists (Marine Microbial Eukaryotes) in a Changing Arctic

Abstract

Advances in sequencing technology and the environmental genomic approaches have brought attention to the vastness of protist biodiversity. While over much of the world’s oceans the species and phylotypes making up this diversity are assumed to be something previously hidden and now revealed, the recent rapid changes in the Arctic mean that such assumptions may be a simplification. Historical morphological species data can be used to validate new records provided that more of these species are identified using standard molecular markers. Environmental surveys can also go further by identifying species over regions, seasons and depths. High throughput sequencing and bioinformatics tools provide a means of monitoring and eventually predicting the consequences of change. We give an example of how microbial eukaryote communities differ over pan-arctic scales, emphasizing the need for additional sampling and the need for caution in extrapolating the results of one region to the entire Arctic.