The diversity and biogeography of microeukaryotes in the euphotic zone of the northwestern Pacific Ocean

Abstract

Microeukaryotes are the key ecosystem drivers mediating marine productivity, the food web and biogeochemical cycles. The northwestern Pacific Ocean (NWPO), as one of the world's largest oligotrophic regions, remains largely unexplored regarding diversity and biogeography of microeukaryotes. Here, we investigated the community composition and geographical distribution of microeukaryotes collected from the euphotic zone of three different regions in the NWPO using high-throughput sequencing of the 18S rRNA gene and quantified the contributions of environmental factors on the distributions of microeukaryotes. The relative abundance of different group taxa, except for Ciliophora, presented distinct patterns in each region, and Metazoa and Dinoflagellata dominated the community, contributing approximately half of reads abundance. Spatial and environmental factors explained 66.01% of community variation in the NWPO. Temperature was the most important environmental factor significantly correlated with community structure. Bacterial biomass was also significantly correlated with microeukaryotic distribution, especially for Dinoflagellata and Diatomea. Network analysis showed strong correlations between microeukaryotic groups and free-living bacteria and different bacterial taxa were correlated with specific microeukaryotic groups, indicating that their interactions enabled microeukaryotic groups to adapt to diverse environments. This study provides a first glance at the diversity and geographical distribution of microeukaryotes in the NWPO and sheds light on the biotic and abiotic factors in shaping the microeukaryotic community in the ocean.

Keywords: 18S rRNA gene sequencing; Biogeography; Environmental factors; Microeukaryotes; The northwestern Pacific Ocean.