California Current Ecosystem LTER. marine metagenome

The California Current Ecosystem (CCE) LTER site is a productive coastal upwelling biome structured by remote and local physical forcing, as well as biotic interactions in the ocean water column. The CCE site, building upon 60 years of extensive time-series measurements by CalCOFI, seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying transitions between different states of this ecosystem, as well as their corollary: ecosystem resilience. Our overarching questions are: What are the mechanisms leading to different states in a coastal pelagic ecosystem? What is the interplay between changing ocean climate, community structure and ecosystem dynamics? In this context the MIRADA project is providing a deep sequence-based look at microbial diversity along one of the major transects that is part of the CCE LTER site. Samples were obtained along a transect from coastal to open ocean water, at the surface and chlorophyll maximum at each site, for a total of eight samples. Sequences were obtained for archaea, bacteria, and eukarya for each sample. These sequences will provide information on the major taxa present in the CCE biome, differences in coastal and offshore microbial diversity, and differences in surface and chlorophyll maximum microbial diversity. The MIRADA data will be used to compare to other samples obtained during upwelling events during CCE process investigation cruises. They will also provide information for molecular probe development to follow some microbial taxa at higher spatial and temporal resolution using other technologies.