In every liter of seawater there are between 10 and 100 billion life forms, mostly invisible, called marine plankton or marine microbiome, which form the largest and most dynamic ecosystem on our planet, at the heart of global ecological and economic processes. While physical and chemical parameters of planktonic ecosystems are fairly well measured and modeled at the planetary scale, biological data are still scarce due to the extreme cost and relative inflexibility of the classical vessels and instruments used to explore marine biodiversity. Here we introduce ‘Plankton Planet’, an initiative whose goal is to engage the curiosity and creativity of researchers, makers, and mariners to ( i ) co-develop a new generation of cost-effective (frugal) universal scientific instrumentation to measure the genetic and morphological diversity of marine microbiomes in context, ( ii ) organize their systematic deployment through coastal or open ocean communities of sea-users/farers, to generate uniform plankton data across global and long-term spatio-temporal scales, and ( iii ) setup tools to flow the data without embargo into public and explorable databases. As proof-of-concept, we show how 20 crews of sailors were able to sample plankton biomass from the world surface ocean in a single year, generating the first seatizen-based, planetary dataset of marine plankton biodiversity based on DNA barcodes. The quality of this dataset is comparable to that generated by Tara Oceans and is not biased by the multiplication of samplers. The data unveil significant genetic novelty and can be used to explore the taxonomic and ecological diversity of plankton at both regional and global scales. This pilot project paves the way for construction of a miniaturized, modular, evolvable, affordable and open-source citizen field-platform that will allow systematic assessment of the eco/morpho/genetic variation of aquatic ecosystems and microbiomes across the dimensions of the Earth system.

In every liter of seawater there are between 10 and 100 billion life forms, mostly invisible, called plankton, which form the largest and most dynamic ecosystem on our planet, at the heart of global ecological and economic processes. While physical and chemical parameters of planktonic ecosystems are fairly well measured and modelled at the planetary scale, but biological data are still scarce due to the extreme cost and relative inflexibility of the classical vessels and instruments used to explore marine biodiversity. Here we introduce ‘ Plankton Planet ’, an initiative whose goal is to merge the creativity of researchers, makers, and mariners to ( i ) develop frugal scientific instrumentation and protocols to assess the genetic and morphological diversity of plankton life, and ( ii ) organize their systematic deployment through fleets of volunteer sailors, fishermen, or cargo-ships to generate comparable and open-access plankton data across global and long-term spatio-temporal scales. As proof-of-concept, we show how 20 crews of sailors (“planktonauts”) were abl to sample plankton biomass from the world surface ocean in a single year, generating the first citizen-based, planetary dataset of plankton biodiversity based on DNA barcodes. The quality of this dataset is comparable to that generated by Tara Oceans and is not biased by the multiplication of samplers. This dataset has unveiled significant genetic novelty and can be used to explore the taxonomic and ecological diversity of plankton at both regional and global scales. This pilot project paves the way for construction of a miniaturized, modular, evolvable, affordable and open-source citizen field-platform that will allow systematic assessment of the eco/morpho/genetic variation of aquatic ecosystems across the dimensions of the Earth system.

Dinoflagellates (Alveolata) are one of the ecologically most important groups of modern phytoplankton. Their biological complexity makes assessment of their global diversity and community structure difficult. We used massive V9 18S rDNA sequencing from 106 size-fractionated plankton communities collected across the world's surface oceans during the Tara Oceans expedition (2009-2012) to assess patterns of pelagic dinoflagellate diversity and community structuring over global taxonomic and ecological scales. Our data and analyses suggest that dinoflagellate diversity has been largely underestimated, representing overall ∼ 1/2 of protistan rDNA metabarcode richness assigned at ≥ 90% to a reference sequence in the world's surface oceans. Dinoflagellate metabarcode diversity and abundance display regular patterns across the global scale, with different order-level taxonomic compositions across organismal size fractions. While the pico to nano-planktonic communities are composed of an extreme diversity of metabarcodes assigned to Gymnodiniales or are simply undetermined, most micro-dinoflagellate metabarcodes relate to the well-referenced Gonyaulacales and Peridiniales orders, and a lower abundance and diversity of essentially symbiotic Peridiniales is unveiled in the meso-plankton. Our analyses could help future development of biogeochemical models of pelagic systems integrating the separation of dinoflagellates into functional groups according to plankton size classes.

The Tara Oceans expedition (2009-2013) sampled contrasting ecosystems of the world oceans, collecting environmental data and plankton, from viruses to metazoans, for later analysis using modern sequencing and state-of-the-art imaging technologies. It surveyed 210 ecosystems in 20 biogeographic provinces, collecting over 35000 samples of seawater and plankton. The interpretation of such an extensive collection of samples in their ecological context requires means to explore, assess and access raw and validated data sets. To address this challenge, the Tara Oceans Consortium offers open science resources, including the use of open access archives for nucleotides (ENA) and for environmental, biogeochemical, taxonomic and morphological data (PANGAEA), and the development of on line discovery tools and collaborative annotation tools for sequences and images. Here, we present an overview of Tara Oceans Data, and we provide detailed registries (data sets) of all campaigns (from port-to-port), stations and sampling events.

Marine plankton support global biological and geochemical processes. Surveys of their biodiversity have hitherto been geographically restricted and have not accounted for the full range of plankton size. We assessed eukaryotic diversity from 334 size-fractionated photic-zone plankton communities collected across tropical and temperate oceans during the circumglobal Tara Oceans expedition. We analyzed 18 S ribosomal DNA sequences across the intermediate plankton-size spectrum from the smallest unicellular eukaryotes (protists, >0.8 micrometers) to small animals of a few millimeters. Eukaryotic ribosomal diversity saturated at ~150,000 operational taxonomic units, about one-third of which could not be assigned to known eukaryotic groups. Diversity emerged at all taxonomic levels, both within the groups comprising the ~11,200 cataloged morphospecies of eukaryotic plankton and among twice as many other deep-branching lineages of unappreciated importance in plankton ecology studies. Most eukaryotic plankton biodiversity belonged to heterotrophic protistan groups, particularly those known to be parasites or symbiotic hosts.

The interrogation of genetic markers in environmental meta-barcoding studies is currently seriously hindered by the lack of taxonomically curated reference data sets for the targeted genes. The Protist Ribosomal Reference database (PR2, http://ssu-rrna.org/) provides a unique access to eukaryotic small sub-unit (SSU) ribosomal RNA and DNA sequences, with curated taxonomy. The database mainly consists of nuclear-encoded protistan sequences. However, metazoans, land plants, macrosporic fungi and eukaryotic organelles (mitochondrion, plastid and others) are also included because they are useful for the analysis of high-troughput sequencing data sets. Introns and putative chimeric sequences have been also carefully checked. Taxonomic assignation of sequences consists of eight unique taxonomic fields. In total, 136 866 sequences are nuclear encoded, 45 708 (36 501 mitochondrial and 9657 chloroplastic) are from organelles, the remaining being putative chimeric sequences. The website allows the users to download sequences from the entire and partial databases (including representative sequences after clustering at a given level of similarity). Different web tools also allow searches by sequence similarity. The presence of both rRNA and rDNA sequences, taking into account introns (crucial for eukaryotic sequences), a normalized eight terms ranked-taxonomy and updates of new GenBank releases were made possible by a long-term collaboration between experts in taxonomy and computer scientists.