What is it about?
This region of the Southwest Pacific Ocean has been hypothesized to be a 'hot spot' for biological nitrogen fixation, but is largely understudied. We show that there is indeed a broad diversity of cyanobacterial nitrogen fixers in this region and that they exhibit a certain pattern in their distributions and environmental preferences.
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Why is it important?
By use of quantitative PCR (qPCR) out at sea, we demonstrate it is possible to observe diverse cyanobacterial assemblages out at sea in near real time. With this approach we identified many cyanobacterial nitrogen fixers, which are important for the marine nitrogen budget, to be present. They also grouped into surface and sub-surface clusters where the recently discovered and described unicellular cyanobacteria Candidatus Atelocyanobacterium thalassa (UCYN-A) had different environmental preferences than the other cyanobacteria.
Perspectives
Data for this article was collected during my first scientific cruise where I also took on the challenge of running qPCR on a moving, rocking vessel with less than satisfactory contamination prevention. In the end I still managed to deliver reliable data for the research team to make informed decisions on sampling locations and strategies. I'm hoping that more researches can experience the benefit of that.
Marcus Stenegren
Stockholm University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Distribution and drivers of symbiotic and free-living diazotrophic cyanobacteria in the Western Tropical South Pacific, Biogeosciences Discussions, March 2017, Copernicus GmbH,
DOI: 10.5194/bg-2017-63.
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