Microbial eukaryotes in an Arctic under-ice spring bloom north of Svalbard.

In this study, we investigated microbial eukaryote diversity and community compositional differences in an under-ice spring bloom north of Svalbard. Our mainobjectives were to: 1) Identify the community of microbial eukaryotes in two ice-coveredstations, 2) to unravel the influence of water masses of different characteristics and historyversus local processes on the composition of the microbial protist communities, and 3) tostudy the metabolically active fraction of the community by comparing inventories based onrRNA and the rRNA gene.