The Tara Oceans Polar Circle Expedition: Macroecology of Planktonic Communities on Arctic Shelves.

Lee Karp-Boss1, Colomban de Vargas2, Lars Stemmann3, Jean-Baptiste Romagnan4, Pierre-Luc Grondin5, Eric Pelletier6, Patrick Wincker6, Stephane Audic2, Sebastien Colin2, Chris Bowler7, Marcel Babin8, Eric Karsenti9, Lionel Guidi10 and Tara Oceans Consortium, (1)University of Maine, School of Marine Sciences, Orono, ME, United States, (2)Station Biologique de Roscoff, UPMC, Roscoff, France, (3)University Pierre and Marie Curie Paris VI - LOV, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, (4)University Pierre and Marie Curie Paris VI, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, (5)Takuvik Joint Laboratory (UL/CNRS), Department of Biology, Laval University, Quebec, QC, Canada, (6)CEA–Institut de Génomique, GENOSCOPE, Evry, France, France, (7)Ecole Normale Supérieure, Institut de Biologie/Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Section, Paris, France, (8)UMI Takuvik (CNRS/U. Laval), Québec, QC, Canada, (9)European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany, (10)CNRS, Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche-sur-Mer, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France
Abstract:
The Tara Oceans Polar Circle Expedition is an international effort that aims at gaining a pan-Arctic view of the diversity, structure and function of planktonic communities in the context of the diverse environmental conditions present on the different Arctic shelves. The expedition took place during the summer and fall of 2013 on board the research schooner Tara. During the circumpolar navigation, high-resolution inline measurements of physical, chemical and optical properties of surface water were conducted and integrated with vertical profiles and discrete water samples collected at selected stations. The result is a rich dataset of physical (CTD and optical properties), chemical (e.g., nutrients, pH, pCO2, carbonates, HPLC pigments) and biological measurements of standing stocks (integrating advanced cell imagery approaches with genomic analysis), that were collected using the same methodologies across all Arctic regions and cover the entire size spectrum of plankton ’end to end’, from viruses to fish larvae. Here we provide an overview of the expedition, describe the data sets available and present initial results.