Protists in the polar regions: comparing occurrence in the Arctic and Southern oceans using pyrosequencing

Figures & data

Fig. 1  Locations of sampling sites (white dots) in the (a) Arctic Ocean and the (b) Southern Ocean.

Table 1 Number of reads and defined operational taxonomic units (OTUs) assigned to the major taxonomic groups.

	Arctic Ocean total reads/defined OTUs	Southern Ocean total reads/defined OTUs
Haptophytes	14 682/1106	58 624/2011
Chlorophytes	22 160/1133	2674/264
Stramenopiles	15 077/1668	78 668/5524
Alveolates	57 048/7452	62 768/7117

Fig. 2  Venn diagrams showing the overlap of operational taxonomic units (98% similarity level) between the two polar regions for (a) all four groups; (b) haptophytes; (c) chlorophytes; (d) stramenopiles; and (e) alveolates.

Fig. 3  Colour-coded matrix plot, illustrating the relative read abundance of abundant operational taxonomic units (OTUs) (abundance ≥1%) for (a) haptophytes; (b) stramenopiles; (c) chlorophytes; and (d) alveolates in the Arctic Ocean (AO) and the Southern Ocean (SO). White boxes indicate the absence of the respective OTU. The green stars indicate the two OTUs that occurred in the abundant biosphere in both regions.

Fig. 4  Proportion of common operational taxonomic units (occurring in both polar regions) within the different groups.