Phytoplankton Community Dynamics in the Black Sea: Insights from High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) Data Analysis across 12 Oceanographic Campaigns

The marine ecosystem of the Black Sea houses a diverse phytoplankton community crucial for regional biogeochemical processes. Recent efforts have focused on understanding the taxonomy and dynamics of this community. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) emerges as a powerful tool for pigment separation and identification in phytoplankton samples. This study examines HPLC pigment data collected during 12 oceanographic bio-optic campaigns in the Black Sea occurred from 2006 to 2019. The primary objective is to understand the taxonomic composition and community structure of the phytoplankton community. Analysis involved employing various statistical techniques and bioinformatics tools, including clustering, network-based community detection. These methods aimed to identify distinct phytoplankton groups and their relative abundance across the campaigns. Results reveal that the Black Sea phytoplankton community is predominantly composed of diatoms and dinoflagellates, with varying contributions from other groups such as prasinophytes, haptophytes (coccolitophores), and chlorophytes. Additionally, different patterns of community composition and pigment ratios were investigated across the campaigns, indicating spatial variations in phytoplankton community structure influenced by environmental factors. This study aims to contribute to our understanding of the extent to which advanced multivariate analysis techniques can be applied to the investigation of the taxonomy and community structure of Black Sea phytoplankton.

Primary Presenter: Elisabetta Canuti, Joint Research Centre, European Commission (elisabetta.canuti@gmail.com)

Authors:

Antonella Penna, Department of Biomolecular Sciences, University of Urbino, 61029, Urbino, Italy  (antonella.penna@uniurb.it)