Validating biogeographical theory for protists: Distribution pattern in Europe

原生生物（真核微生物）履行着重要的生态功能，因为它们是水生环境中主要的初级生产者，同时也是细菌的主要消费者，因此是食物网的基础。此外，原生生物的多样性是巨大的，但它们的分布格局还不是很清楚。有些分类群具有明显的全球分布特征，而另一些分类群具有明显的地方性特征。原生生物的分布在多大程度上遵循在高等生物中观察到的模式是非常有争议的。对已知的动物和植物的生物地理模式推广到其他生物的怀疑是非常适当的！为此，欧洲冰川后的生物地理学是进一步测试原生生物生物地理模式的普遍性的理想测试案例。高通量测序现在可以解除迷雾：扩增子项目旨在追踪多样性模式。因此，我们建议结合冰川后大型生物的分布格局来研究欧洲淡水中原生生物的分布格局。我们将研究天然水生生态系统中原生生物多样性格局的变化，并基于250个欧洲湖泊的浮游生物样本，包括来自西班牙、法国、意大利、瑞士、奥地利、罗马尼亚、匈牙利、捷克共和国、斯洛伐克、波兰、瑞典、挪威、希腊、克罗地亚和保加利亚的湖泊，将这些变化与环境因素联系起来。空间分析将辅以中欧梯度内选定湖泊的季节分析，以便将季节与空间格局分开。该项目将基于大量并行测序数据，分析欧洲淡水湖群落的生物地理学、物种地理学和原生生物分子多样性。总的来说，该项目将测试微生物真核生物的一般生物学理论的有效性。

Protists (eukaryotic microbes) fulfill critical ecological functions as they are the dominant primary producers in aquatic environments and, at the same time, are the major consumers of bacteria and thus at the basis of food webs. Further, protist diversity is tremendous but their distribution pattern are not well understood. While some taxa obviously are globally distributed, some other taxa are clearly endemic. It is highly controversial to what extent protist distribution follows the pattern observed for higher organisms. Doubts about the generalizability of biogeographic patterns as known for animals and plants to other organisms are highly appropriate! To that end, the post-glacial biogeography of Europe is an ideal test case for further testing the generalizability of biogeographic patterns in protists. High throughput sequencing now allows for lifting the fog: amplicon projects aim at tracking down diversity patterns. Thus, we propose to investigate protist distribution pattern in European freshwaters in light of the post-glacial distribution patterns of macro-organisms. We will address variation in protist diversity pattern in natural aquatic ecosystems and relate these changes to environmental factors based on plankton samples from 250 European lakes including lakes from Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Croatia and Bulgaria. Spatial analysis will be complemented by seasonal analysis of selected lakes within a central European gradient in order to separate seasonal from spatial pattern. The project will analyze biogeography, phylogeopgraphy and diversity of protist molecular diversity in European freshwater lakes at the community based on massive parallel sequencing data. Taken together the project will test the validity of general biological theories for microbial eukaryotes.