Document of bibliographic reference 287713

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century

Abstract

The ocean constitutes one of the vastest and richest biomes on our planet. Most recent estimations, all based on indirect approaches, suggest that there are millions of marine eukaryotic species. Moreover, a large majority of these are small (less than 1 mm), cryptic and still unknown to science. However, this knowledge gap, caused by the lack of diagnostic morphological features in small organisms and the limited sampling of the global ocean, is currently being filled, thanks to new DNA-based approaches. The molecular technique of PCR amplification of homologous gene regions combined with high-throughput sequencing, routinely used to census unculturable prokaryotes, is now also being used to characterize whole communities of marine eukaryotes. Here, we review how this methodological advancement has helped to better quantify the magnitude and patterns of marine eukaryotic diversity, with an emphasis on taxonomic groups previously largely overlooked. We then discuss obstacles remaining to achieve a global understanding of marine eukaryotic diversity. In particular, we argue that 18S variable regions do not provide sufficient taxonomic resolution to census marine life, and suggest combining broad eukaryotic surveys targeting the 18S rRNA region with more taxon-focused analyses of hypervariable regions to improve our understanding of the diversity of species, the functional units of marine ecosystems.This article is part of the themed issue ‘From DNA barcodes to biomes’.

WebOfScience code

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000381779700009

Bibliographic citation

Leray, M.; Knowlton, N. (2016). Censusing marine eukaryotic diversity in the twenty-first century. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. (B Biol. Sci.) 371(1702): 20150331. https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0331

Topic

Marine

Is peer reviewed

true

Access rights

open access

Is accessible for free

true