The Tara delivers its findings on plankton, an … – BFMTV.COM

The Tara Oceans expedition , an international research consortium, has delivered on Thursday a first abundant harvest information s the plankton sailor who could better understand the impact of global warming on this vast ecosystem vital for the planet.

The research team mapped the biodiversity of a wide range of organisms forming plankton during expeditions on the Tara schooner between 2009 and 2013.

A diversity amazing planktonic

These scientists, who publish five studies Thursday in the American magazine Science , explored the interactions between the various plankton and how they act on their surroundings and are affected by various variables, particularly the temperature.

“The analyzes revealed about 40 million microbial genes which the vast majority are new, suggesting that the plankton biodiversity could be much greater than what we imagined,” said Patrick Wincker of French National Sequencing Center (Genoscope), one of the team members. “This is the greatest work ever done for sequencing of marine organisms,” he said.

The microorganisms forming -virus plankton, microbes, unicellular algae and fish larvae – drifting in the ocean by the currents, produce half of our oxygen, absorb much of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere and influence as they are influenced by climate.

Understanding, to better study global warming

This mapping is a first step towards greater understanding of the dynamics and structure of the marine ecosystem whole, comment the researchers.

In particular, they sequenced nearly a billion DNA barcoding of micro-organisms in plankton and found that different groups of organisms form depending on the temperature of the water.

Understanding the distribution of these organisms in the oceans and their interactions will be very useful to calibrate computer models needed to study changes to the Globally, focussing particularly on global warming and its future impact on ocean ecosystems. “This adventure also serves to show (the public) how the oceans are important for our own well-being,” said Eric Karsenti, director of Tara Oceans and Director of Research at the CNRS.

The expedition has reduced 35,000 samples from all the seas and ocean basins on the planet a small part has so far been studied.