Microbes are dominant drivers of biogeochemical processes, yet drawing a global picture of functional diversity, microbial community structure, and their ecological determinants remains a grand… (More)
Picoeukaryotes are a taxonomically diverse group of organisms less than 2 micrometers in diameter. Photosynthetic marine picoeukaryotes in the genus Micromonas thrive in ecosystems ranging from… (More)
Eukaryotic molecular diversity within the picoplanktonic size-fraction has primarily been studied in marine surface waters. Here, the vertical distribution of picoeukaryotic diversity was… (More)
Marine cyanobacteria of the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus are important contributors to global primary production occupying a key position at the base of marine food webs. The genetically… (More)
A quantitative PCR (QPCR) assay based on the use of SYBR Green I was developed to assess the abundance of specific groups of picoeukaryotes in marine waters. Six primer sets were designed targeting… (More)
The interrogation of genetic markers in environmental meta-barcoding studies is currently seriously hindered by the lack of taxonomically curated reference data sets for the targeted genes. The… (More)
Marine plankton support global biological and geochemical processes. Surveys of their biodiversity have hitherto been geographically restricted and have not accounted for the full range of plankton… (More)
The class Prasinophyceae (Chlorophyta) contains several photosynthetic picoeukaryotic species described from cultured isolates. The ecology of these organisms and their contributions to the… (More)
BACKGROUND
Biological communities are normally composed of a few abundant and many rare species. This pattern is particularly prominent in microbial communities, in which most constituent taxa are… (More)
Acquisition of phototrophy is widely distributed in the eukaryotic tree of life and can involve algal endosymbiosis or plastid retention from green or red origins. Species with acquired phototrophy… (More)