3.2.2. Case study 2
The oceanic distribution of Chlorophyta was reported by (Lopes dos Santos et al., 2017) based on the Tara Oceans 18S-V9 rRNA metabarcode dataset. In this study, prasinophytes clade VII and mamiellophyceae appeared to be the most abundant group of Chlorophyta in the oceans. Prasinophytes clade VII were abundant in open ocean waters whereas mamielophyceae were abundant in a larger spectrum of environments, including high latitudes as well as the Benguela current (Figure 4 in (Lopes dos Santos et al., 2017)). Using the OBA “Community ecological analysis “ interface applied to the same metabarcode dataset, we obtained similar oceanic distributions of these two Chlorophyta groups (“prasino clade VII” and “mamiellophyceae”) in the plankton size fraction ranging from 0.8 to 5 µm. Indeed, figures 6A and 6B confirm respectively that prasinophytes clade VII were more abundant in open ocean waters, whereas Mamiellophyceae were also abundant in coastal waters. Moreover, the scatter-plots of their relative abundance (% OTUs) versus sampling latitude illustrates the clear bounding of prasinophytes clade VII within 40 degrees of latitude (Figure 5C), whereas Mamiellophyceae extend into high latitudes both in the northern and southern hemispheres (Figure 5D).