Next week, researchers from the OCEANO-ECIMAT group will begin the ENVISION campaigns on board the ship Ramón Margalef. The ENVISION campaigns are part of the project “Unraveling the role of B vitamins in the community structure, activity and succession of microbial plankton in a coastal outcrop system (ENVISION)”, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and aim to study, for the first time, the dynamics of B vitamins and their role in the dynamics of microbial plankton in a highly productive region. In addition to researchers from the OCEANO-ECIMAT group, specifically from the biological oceanography group of the University of Vigo (http://gobio.webs.uvigo.es/), researchers from the Linnaeus University (Sweden) and the University of Southern California (USA) are participating in the project.
Biological Oceanography Group
As Eva Teira, Principal Investigator of the campaign, points out, “the role of vitamins in the regulation of planktonic microbial communities has been ignored for years, despite the fact that, for example, it has been shown that most phytoplankton species need an external source of vitamin B12 to grow, since they lack the metabolic pathway for its synthesis. Only recently has the appropriate methodology been developed to measure the concentration of vitamins in the sea. The few measurements obtained to date demonstrate the existence of extensive ocean regions, including coastal areas, where the concentration of B vitamins is extremely low, suggesting that these organic compounds could limit the growth of certain species of microbial plankton in large areas of the ocean.”
The overall objective of the project is to determine whether the availability of B vitamins influences the abundance, distribution and activity of microbial plankton in a highly productive region. To this end, the Biological Oceanography Group of the University of Vigo organized 3 oceanographic campaigns aboard the B/O Ramón Margalef, in the coast-ocean transition zone in front of the Ría de Vigo, during which they will try to: (1) characterize the spatial and temporal variability of the concentration of B vitamins in the water column; (2) evaluate the spatial and temporal variability of the response of the microbial community to the addition of nutrients and/or vitamins B1 and B12; and (3) study the role of B vitamins in the succession of microbial plankton species. They will follow a multidisciplinary approach, including the measurement of a large number of physical, chemical and biological variables in the sampling area, the performance of experiments on board the ship, and the application of more sophisticated molecular tools such as metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses.
The campaigns will begin next week and will be carried out, predictably, during 3 contrasted hydrographic situations: (1) beginning of phytoplankton proliferation (ENVISION-I, 17-26 February 2016); (2) spring upwelling conditions (ENVISION-II, 16-25 April 2016) and (3) summer upwelling conditions (ENVISION-III, 2-11 August 2016).
