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Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century

The ocean constitutes one of the vastest and richest biomes on our planet. Most recent estimations, all based on indirect approaches, suggest that there are millions of marine eukaryotic species. Moreover, a large majority of these are small (less than 1 mm), cryptic and still unknown to science. Ho...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Leray, Matthieu, Knowlton, Nancy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971183/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27481783
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0331
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author Leray, Matthieu
Knowlton, Nancy
author_facet Leray, Matthieu
Knowlton, Nancy
author_sort Leray, Matthieu
collection PubMed
description The ocean constitutes one of the vastest and richest biomes on our planet. Most recent estimations, all based on indirect approaches, suggest that there are millions of marine eukaryotic species. Moreover, a large majority of these are small (less than 1 mm), cryptic and still unknown to science. However, this knowledge gap, caused by the lack of diagnostic morphological features in small organisms and the limited sampling of the global ocean, is currently being filled, thanks to new DNA-based approaches. The molecular technique of PCR amplification of homologous gene regions combined with high-throughput sequencing, routinely used to census unculturable prokaryotes, is now also being used to characterize whole communities of marine eukaryotes. Here, we review how this methodological advancement has helped to better quantify the magnitude and patterns of marine eukaryotic diversity, with an emphasis on taxonomic groups previously largely overlooked. We then discuss obstacles remaining to achieve a global understanding of marine eukaryotic diversity. In particular, we argue that 18S variable regions do not provide sufficient taxonomic resolution to census marine life, and suggest combining broad eukaryotic surveys targeting the 18S rRNA region with more taxon-focused analyses of hypervariable regions to improve our understanding of the diversity of species, the functional units of marine ecosystems. This article is part of the themed issue ‘From DNA barcodes to biomes’.
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spelling pubmed-49711832016-09-05 Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century Leray, Matthieu Knowlton, Nancy Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles The ocean constitutes one of the vastest and richest biomes on our planet. Most recent estimations, all based on indirect approaches, suggest that there are millions of marine eukaryotic species. Moreover, a large majority of these are small (less than 1 mm), cryptic and still unknown to science. However, this knowledge gap, caused by the lack of diagnostic morphological features in small organisms and the limited sampling of the global ocean, is currently being filled, thanks to new DNA-based approaches. The molecular technique of PCR amplification of homologous gene regions combined with high-throughput sequencing, routinely used to census unculturable prokaryotes, is now also being used to characterize whole communities of marine eukaryotes. Here, we review how this methodological advancement has helped to better quantify the magnitude and patterns of marine eukaryotic diversity, with an emphasis on taxonomic groups previously largely overlooked. We then discuss obstacles remaining to achieve a global understanding of marine eukaryotic diversity. In particular, we argue that 18S variable regions do not provide sufficient taxonomic resolution to census marine life, and suggest combining broad eukaryotic surveys targeting the 18S rRNA region with more taxon-focused analyses of hypervariable regions to improve our understanding of the diversity of species, the functional units of marine ecosystems. This article is part of the themed issue ‘From DNA barcodes to biomes’. The Royal Society 2016-09-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4971183/ /pubmed/27481783 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0331 Text en © 2016 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Articles
Leray, Matthieu
Knowlton, Nancy
Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century
title Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century
title_full Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century
title_fullStr Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century
title_full_unstemmed Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century
title_short Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century
title_sort censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4971183/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27481783
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0331
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