Protist Molecular Ecology in Continental Systems

A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Microbiology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2020) | Viewed by 7915

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Real Jardín Botánico, CSIC, Plaza de Murillo 2, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Interests: protists; diversity; ecology; phylogeny; biogeography; testate amoebae; barcoding; metabarcoding

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Protists represent a large proportion of biodiversity in almost all ecosystems on Earth. They play crucial roles in major ecological processes such as primary production, nutrient cycling, and regulation of microbial populations. Despite having been neglected in the past, protist ecology is becoming a hot topic in microbial ecology today, a change that has in part been fostered by the recent developments in sequencing technology. In comparison to their marine counterparts, protists in continental systems (soil and freshwater systems) have been relatively little studied. This contrasts with the immense influence on the ecosystem services continental systems provide; there is, thus, an important knowledge gap to be filled.

In this Special Issue, we will focus firstly on assessing soil and freshwater protist diversity and its drivers (biotic, climatic, geographic, etc.) as revealed with molecular approaches. Diversity will be studied not only from a taxonomic perspective but with a focus on the organisms’ functions in the environment. Accordingly, we will also deal with organisms’ interactions (predation, parasitism, mutualism), either between protists or with other microorganisms (prokaryotic and eukaryotic), as well as with plants and animals.  

Dr. Enrique Lara
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • algae
  • foodweb
  • heterotrophic protists
  • interaction networks
  • metabarcoding
  • microbial eukaryotes
  • mixotrophy
  • nutrient cycling
  • parasites
  • photosynthesis
  • symbiosis

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 6122 KiB  
Article
What Drives the Diversity of the Most Abundant Terrestrial Cercozoan Family (Rhogostomidae, Cercozoa, Rhizaria)?
by Hüsna Öztoprak, Susanne Walden, Thierry Heger, Michael Bonkowski and Kenneth Dumack
Microorganisms 2020, 8(8), 1123; https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8081123 - 26 Jul 2020
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 3732
Abstract
Environmental sequencing surveys of soils and freshwaters revealed high abundance and diversity of the Rhogostomidae, a group of omnivorous thecate amoebae. This is puzzling since only a few Rhogostomidae species have yet been described and only a handful of reports mention them in [...] Read more.
Environmental sequencing surveys of soils and freshwaters revealed high abundance and diversity of the Rhogostomidae, a group of omnivorous thecate amoebae. This is puzzling since only a few Rhogostomidae species have yet been described and only a handful of reports mention them in field surveys. We investigated the putative cryptic diversity of the Rhogostomidae by a critical re-evaluation of published environmental sequencing data and in-depth ecological and morphological trait analyses. The Rhogostomidae exhibit an amazing diversity of genetically distinct clades that occur in a variety of different environments. We further broadly sampled for Rhogostomidae species; based on these isolates, we describe eleven new species and highlight important morphological traits for species delimitation. The most important environmental drivers that shape the Rhogostomidae community were soil moisture, soil pH, and total plant biomass. The length/width ratio of the theca was a morphological trait related to the colonized habitats, but not the shape and size of the aperture that is often linked to moisture adaption in testate and thecate amoebae. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Protist Molecular Ecology in Continental Systems)
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19 pages, 8850 KiB  
Article
Tracing the Origin of Planktonic Protists in an Ancient Lake
by Nataliia V. Annenkova, Caterina R. Giner and Ramiro Logares
Microorganisms 2020, 8(4), 543; https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8040543 - 9 Apr 2020
Cited by 26 | Viewed by 3776
Abstract
Ancient lakes are among the most interesting models for evolution studies because their biodiversity is the result of a complex combination of migration and speciation. Here, we investigate the origin of single celled planktonic eukaryotes from the oldest lake in the world—Lake Baikal [...] Read more.
Ancient lakes are among the most interesting models for evolution studies because their biodiversity is the result of a complex combination of migration and speciation. Here, we investigate the origin of single celled planktonic eukaryotes from the oldest lake in the world—Lake Baikal (Russia). By using 18S rDNA metabarcoding, we recovered 1414 Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) belonging to protists populating surface waters (1–50 m) and representing pico/nano-sized cells. The recovered communities resembled other lacustrine freshwater assemblages found elsewhere, especially the taxonomically unclassified protists. However, our results suggest that a fraction of Baikal protists could belong to glacial relicts and have close relationships with marine/brackish species. Moreover, our results suggest that rapid radiation may have occurred among some protist taxa, partially mirroring what was already shown for multicellular organisms in Lake Baikal. We found 16% of the OTUs belonging to potential species flocks in Stramenopiles, Alveolata, Opisthokonta, Archaeplastida, Rhizaria, and Hacrobia. Putative flocks predominated in Chrysophytes, which are highly diverse in Lake Baikal. Also, the 18S rDNA of a number of species (7% of the total) differed >10% from other known sequences. These taxa as well as those belonging to the flocks may be endemic to Lake Baikal. Overall, our study points to novel diversity of planktonic protists in Lake Baikal, some of which may have emerged in situ after evolutionary diversification. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Protist Molecular Ecology in Continental Systems)
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