Diel Metatranscriptomes Capture Cyanobacteria-Dominated Lake Erie Community Response to Episodic Events

In large freshwater systems such as the Laurentian Great Lakes, climate change has been discussed in the context of long-term shifts in precipitation, pCO2, temperature and ice cover. Yet, few studies address how phytoplankton respond to short-term episodic events which are coincidingly exacerbated by climate change. In turn, even fewer investigate how algae respond to diel fluctuations within the water column. To address these research gaps, we sampled the Lake Erie planktonic community from a geostatic location over the course of two days capturing both diel variation and episodic weather events. Further, this time series captured two ephemeral cyanobacterial pulses. We present this time series as a tool to investigate how planktonic communities transcriptionally respond to episodic events across a diel period.