Phytoplankton dynamics shape bacterioplankton community structure and metabolism during the austral summer–autumn transition in the Western Antarctic Peninsula

This study investigates the bacterioplankton community structure and gene expression during the summer-to-autumn transition in the waters of the Wilhelm Archipelago, within the fragile and sensitive ecosystem of the Southern Ocean. Combined metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses were performed to characterize the taxonomic composition and functional activity of Antarctic marine bacterioplankton. Here we are depositing all supporting environmental data for the analyzed microbial comunity during the survey period. This includes physicochemical data, data on phytoplankton abundances, biomass and pigments' concentration, CARD-FISH probes used, metagenomics assembly and metatranscriptomics sequencing statistics, Spearman correlation between bacterioplankton community taxonomic composition and phytoplankton biomass, ratified protein sequences used as references in phylogenetic analysis and the dynamics of polysaccharide degradation (in TPMs of respective genes). The corresponding metagenome and metatranscriptome sequence data of this project are available from the European Nucleotide Archive (accession PRJNA1347791).