Davis Aerodrome Project (DAP) – genetic analysis of lake and soil communities

The Davis Aerodrome Project (DAP) collected a range of environmental survey data over several field seasons to support a comprehensive environmental assessment of the proposed aerodrome. This data includes flora, fauna, soils, lake ecosystem, nearshore, marine, air quality and meteorological information which has been collected by a number of different methods, and extends across the current Davis Station, proposed aerodrome and supporting infrastructure footprint (Ridge Site), previous sites considered for the aerodrome (Heidemann Valley, Adams Flat), as well as locations across the Vestfold Hills away from any of the proposed developments. This dataset includes high-throughput DNA sequencing data for lake and soil eukaryote communities based on the 18S ribosomal RNA gene and the metazoan communities based on the mitochondrial COI gene. The eukaryote data is summarised in the report ‘Genetic analysis of eukaryote community composition in the Vestfold Hills lakes, Antarctica’.The eukaryote community (including phytoplankton, metazoan, and other taxa excluding bacteria and archaea) from 139 lake and soil samples, and the diatom community from 109 samples, based on high-throughput DNA sequencing of the nuclear 18S ribosomal RNA gene (see ‘DAP lakes 18S eukaryotes’ folder, file names ‘DAP_lake_euk_…’). The samples included benthic mat, sediment, near-lake and interlake soil, filtered water samples, and benthic mat cultures maintained at the AAD. The majority of samples were from the 2019/20 season (n=100), with 39 samples from the 2016/17 season (“GL” samples). The metazoan communities derived from mitochondrial COI sequencing data was created in several sample batches. ‘lakes12’ refers to the first two batches of samples (batch 1 and 2, collected austral summer of 2019/2020), ‘lakes3’ refers to the third batch (austral summer of 2016/2017 and 2019/2020. Data for a fourth batch of samples (‘lakes4’, austral summer 2020/2021) became available in December 2021.3 or more files are included for each dataset: 1)    A FASTA file that provides the DNA sequence for each zOTU.2)    A metadata file with information on each sample (e.g., sample type, collection date and location, and environmental parameters). 3)    A ‘sample by zOTU’ table with the number of sequencing reads for each zOTU in each sample, including the taxonomic assignment for each zOTU. Some datasets have additional tables representing subsets of taxa (e.g., only metazoans). zOTU (zero-radius operational taxonomic unit, or unique DNA sequences) numbers are not equivalent between the datasets, e.g. zotu1 is not the same sequence (or taxon) in the ‘lakes1and2’ and ‘lakes3’ datasets. See columns ‘Lakes3_COI_zotu‘ and ‘Lakes12_COI_zotu‘ in the file ‘DAP_lakes3_COI_zotu_table_curated_taxonomy.xlsx’ for equivalent zotu numbers.