Diversity of Zooplankton and Ichthyoplankton in the Gulf of Mexico: A Taxonomic and Metagenomic Approach

BATTA-LONA, PAOLA; SAAVEDRA-FLORES, ANAID; ROBLES-FLORES, JAVIER; LUNA, ASTRID; JIMÉNEZ-ROSENBERG, SYLVIA PATRICIA; GALINDO-SÁNCHEZ CLARA ELIZABETH; ARTEAGA, MARÍA CLARA; PAOLINELLI, MARCOS; ALEJANDRI-RAMIREZ, NAHOLI DAVID

New Orlenas

Conferencia; 2017 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference; 2017

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative

The Gulf of Mexico exhibits seasonal variability that influences the dynamics of the zooplankton assemblage. Zooplankton and Ichthyoplankton are important sources of energy for organisms of higher trophic levels and can be indicators of the overall health of marine ecosystems. Recent events in the Gulf of Mexico such as oil spills make it a priority to assess accurately the current plankton composition and therefore evaluate possible impacts of such events. Next generation sequencing offers a suite of tools, such as metagenomic analysis, that have become accessible to do fine scale diagnosis and to understand plankton community composition. We report preliminary results on the metagenomic and taxonomic analysis of plankton communities in the Southern region of the Gulf of Mexico. For this study DNA was extracted from 24 plankton samples collected during a September 2015 cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. For each sample region V9 of the gene 18s was amplified to generate amplicons; sequencing of this amplicons was done using MiSeq to obtained MOTUs from the zooplankton community sampled across the 24 samples. Our goals include fine scale diagnosis and the influences of environmental variability on the distribution and diversity of Zooplankton and Ichthyoplankton communities in the Gulf of Mexico. With the help of morphology based taxonomy and molecular biology we intend to contribute to both the taxonomic knowledge and understanding how the plankton communities are responding to oil spills.