Diversity of marine microbial eukaryotes in Nares Strait in summer 2014 and 2016

The Arctic marine microbial community supports higher food webs and consists of multiple trophic networks. In the Arctic, access to both light from above and nutrients determines the net production; however, the rate of nutrient influx, the variability in light quality, and light availability select the microbial community. As the ice bridge that creates the North Water Polynya in Northern Baffin Bay migrates northward, the Kennedy Channel and Kane Basin represent emerging productivity hotspots fed by high-nutrient water from the ice-covered Lincoln Sea. Based on the hydrogeographic characteristics of the channel that connects the Lincoln Sea to Baffin Bay, we hypothesized that the channel community is directly influenced by the Lincoln Sea microbial source. The hypervariable 4 region of the 16S and 18S rRNA genes were amplified and sequenced using high throughput sequencing to reveal present and active microbial community.