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The shell or the kernel: biodiversity estimates of benthic foraminifera
Author(s) -
HABURA ANDREA,
HANES STEVEN D.,
ALEXANDER STEPHEN P.,
BOWSER SAMUEL S.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of eukaryotic microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.067
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1550-7408
pISSN - 1066-5234
DOI - 10.1111/j.1550-7408.2005.05202003_1_31.x
Subject(s) - species richness , biodiversity , biology , benthic zone , foraminifera , sampling (signal processing) , taxon , ecology , species diversity , environmental dna , identification (biology) , marine ecosystem , ecosystem , filter (signal processing) , computer science , computer vision
Estimates of protist biodiversity and distribution have until recently relied on the morphological identification of individual cells. The advent of environmental‐DNA‐based surveys of these protist communities has broadened our understanding of species richness and diversity. A “total‐evidence biodiversity” approach gives two benefits. First, it allows “back‐comparison” to previous studies of ecosystems, permitting estimates of the amount of cryptic diversity in different sampling regimes (and by extension, the fossil record). Second, it will provide the best possible estimate of the total species richness of current study sites. Here, we use a well‐studied benthic protist community, the foraminiferal assemblage of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, to determine the effective parameters of both detection methods. We find that molecular‐based techniques detect well‐characterized calcareous species at depths too great to allow calcification, suggesting that these forms may be able to survive without their distinctive tests. “Fragile” taxa also appear to be better represented in molecular surveys than in morphological ones. The strengths of a combined morphological–molecular approach are demonstrated by an assessment of the distribution of two species in the genus Notodendrodes; morphological detection excels in the identification of distinctive, patchily distributed adults, whereas molecular detection with taxon‐specific probes enabled identification in less favorable sampling conditions. Such a “broad‐plus‐deep” approach appears to maximize detection efficiency in this Antarctic setting. Work supported by NSF OPP0003639.