Validating biogeographical theory for protists: Distribution pattern in Europe

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Dirk Albach; Professor Dr. Jens Boenigk
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems ; Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management ; Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 327839085

Protists (eukaryotic microbes) fulfill critical ecological functions as they are the dominant primary producers in aquatic environments and, at the same time, are the major consumers of bacteria and thus at the basis of food webs. Further, protist diversity is tremendous but their distribution pattern are not well understood. While some taxa obviously are globally distributed, some other taxa are clearly endemic. It is highly controversial to what extent protist distribution follows the pattern observed for higher organisms. Doubts about the generalizability of biogeographic patterns as known for animals and plants to other organisms are highly appropriate! To that end, the post-glacial biogeography of Europe is an ideal test case for further testing the generalizability of biogeographic patterns in protists. High throughput sequencing now allows for lifting the fog: amplicon projects aim at tracking down diversity patterns. Thus, we propose to investigate protist distribution pattern in European freshwaters in light of the post-glacial distribution patterns of macro-organisms. We will address variation in protist diversity pattern in natural aquatic ecosystems and relate these changes to environmental factors based on plankton samples from 250 European lakes including lakes from Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Croatia and Bulgaria. Spatial analysis will be complemented by seasonal analysis of selected lakes within a central European gradient in order to separate seasonal from spatial pattern. The project will analyze biogeography, phylogeopgraphy and diversity of protist molecular diversity in European freshwater lakes at the community based on massive parallel sequencing data. Taken together the project will test the validity of general biological theories for microbial eukaryotes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants