Tintinnid ciliates of the marine microzooplankton in Arctic Seas: a compilation and analysis of species records

We set out to examine a postulated latitudinal trend in species richness within the Arctic Ocean. We compiled species records of tintinnid ciliates in the Arctic from the literature and added our own unpublished Chukchi Sea data to produce a database (available as an Online Resource data file) consi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Polar biology 2017-06, Vol.40 (6), p.1247-1260
Main Authors: Dolan, John R., Pierce, Richard W., Yang, Eun Jin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Biodiversity
Biodiversity and Ecology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Ciliates
Earth Sciences
Ecology
Environmental Sciences
Ice cover
Life Sciences
Microbiology
New records
Ocean
Oceanography
Online databases
Original Paper
Plant Sciences
Plateaus
Plotting
Polar environments
Records
Sampling
Sciences of the Universe
Sea ice
Species
Species richness
Zoology
Zooplankton
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Summary:We set out to examine a postulated latitudinal trend in species richness within the Arctic Ocean. We compiled species records of tintinnid ciliates in the Arctic from the literature and added our own unpublished Chukchi Sea data to produce a database (available as an Online Resource data file) consisting of 1427 records of 89 species from 414 locations above 65°N sampled from 1885 to 2015. While there was no trend of species richness throughout the Arctic, there was a significant positive relationship between species richness and the number of sites sampled in a 2° band, suggesting a sampling effect. Plotting cumulative numbers of species and cumulative number of sites sampled by year, we found a linear relationship in log cumulative numbers of species and log sites sampled, and a lack of a plateau in the species accumulation trend. Species records are highly dominated by four species, accounting for 45% of the records: Acanthostomella norvegica , Parafavella denticulata , Ptychocylis obtusa and Salpingella acuminata , all of which, except S. acuminata , have long been suspected to be morphologically variable, with different morphotypes given undue species status. Pooling all reported species of Acanthostomella , Parafavella and Ptychocylis yielded little qualitative differences but considerable quantitative differences. We found large discrepancies in geographic coverage. We conclude that many zones projected to experience large changes in sea ice coverage are under-sampled. Based on the historical trend, the list of Arctic tintinnid ciliate species will likely continue to grow with new sampling, regardless of changes in the Arctic Seas.
ISSN:0722-4060
1432-2056
DOI:10.1007/s00300-016-2049-0