Eukaryotic plankton diversity and dynamic pattern in Tanwan strait

The protists in marine ecosystem play fundamental ecological roles as producers, consumers, decomposers, and trophic links in aquatic food webs. These links are essential for the biogeochemical processes in the ocean, e.g. plankton communities fix CO2 and other elements into organic matter that lead to the transport of carbon to the deep ocean. Some protists regime shift has been regarded as the indicator of environmental factors change or even the climate change. Although the local and the global eukaryotic plankton diversity has been characterized in the oceans, there is relatively limited information in the China Seas and on the diel dynamic pattern about the size-fractionated plankton communities structure and diversity. In this work, we chose two station (C6&C9) to sample at different water-column depths and different size fractions and different sampling times to analysis the 18S ribosomal DNA. We have retrieved 2468 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) from all the samples, about 99% of which was assigned to known eukaryotic groups. Biodiversity trends and linkages to environmental conditions and biotic factors are still being analyzed.