Pan-oceanic spatial scaling of planktonic ciliate diversity

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A global understanding of spatial diversity patterns of protistan plankton is fundamental to our understanding of their adaptation to, and functioning in, different marine environments. This broad perspective is especially important when trying to elucidate protistan feedback to rapidly changing environmental conditions such as increases in sea temperature and CO2-induced acidification, as well as shifts in nutrient regimes. However, these patterns remain elusive due to small sample sizes, a paucity of samples from many geographic regions, and a lack of contextual environmental data in most biogeography studies. The TARA Oceans program (http://oceans.taraexpeditions.org/) was designed to solve this by sampling more than 350 sites and collecting 261 biological and physico-chemical environmental parameters on its 3-year global voyage (2009-2012). The immediate goal is to use already collected TARA samples for high-throughput sequencing of planktonic ciliates, and for morphological identifications, to elucidate pan-oceanic spatial scaling rules of these model protists and to obtain deeper insights into their biodiversity. The broader impact is the integration of the data (along with data from other investigators contributing to TARA Oceans) into an open-source multidimensional database, which will allow mapping of the global distribution of plankton and generating predictive models of the spatio-temporal evolution of plankton in the face of climate change.