18S V4 region - Tropics to poles: Diversity and composition of coastal eukaryotic marine microalgae communities across five ecoregions.

The objectives of this study are to analyze and compare the community composition and diversity of planktonic marine microalgae in a latitudinal gradient spanning the tropical to polar ecoregions in the South Pacific. This was achieved using eDNA samples and multi-region small subunit rDNA metabarcoding. Our focus was to identify similarities and differences in high-level taxonomic groups across a large latitudinal gradient and assess diversity.