Labex Memolife IBENS • CIRB • Laboratoire Plasticité du Cerveau de l'ESPCI

Guilhem Sommeria-Klein, Romain Watteaux, Federico M. Ibarbalz, Juan José Pierella Karlusich, Daniele Iudicone, Chris Bowler, Hélène Morlon

Abstract

Eukaryotic plankton are an essential and highly diverse component of marine ecosystems, yet their geographic distribution (their “biogeography”) remains poorly understood. In a study published in Science at the end of October, a research team from École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris, Turku University, and Zoological Station Anton Dohrn in Naples studied the global biogeography of eukaryotic plankton from DNA data collected by the Tara ocean exploration schooner. Using a probabilistic model, they established that biogeography varies considerably from one plankton group to the other and that these variations follow two main axes: on the one hand, more diverse groups are more spatially structured; on the other hand, large zooplankton (several millimeters) are structured by ocean basins and on a larger spatial scale, mainly under the influence of ocean currents, whereas small primary producers (a few micrometers) are structured by latitude and on a smaller spatial scale, because of a higher sensitivity to local environmental variations.

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