Abstract
A planetary-scale understanding of the ocean ecosystem, particularly in light of climate change, is crucial. Here, we review the work of Tara Oceans, an international, multidisciplinary project to assess the complexity of ocean life across comprehensive taxonomic and spatial scales. Using a modified sailing boat, the team sampled plankton at 210 globally distributed sites at depths down to 1,000 m. We describe publicly available resources of molecular, morphological and environmental data, and discuss how an ecosystems biology approach has expanded our understanding of plankton diversity and ecology in the ocean as a planetary, interconnected ecosystem. These efforts illustrate how global-scale concepts and data can help to integrate biological complexity into models and serve as a baseline for assessing ecosystem changes and the future habitability of our planet in the Anthropocene epoch.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 428-445 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Nature Reviews Microbiology |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 1 2020 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Microbiology
- General Immunology and Microbiology
- Infectious Diseases
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In: Nature Reviews Microbiology, Vol. 18, No. 8, 01.08.2020, p. 428-445.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Tara Oceans
T2 - towards global ocean ecosystems biology
AU - Tara Oceans Coordinators
AU - Sunagawa, Shinichi
AU - Acinas, Silvia G.
AU - Bork, Peer
AU - Bowler, Chris
AU - Acinas, Silvia G.
AU - Babin, Marcel
AU - Bork, Peer
AU - Boss, Emmanuel
AU - Bowler, Chris
AU - Cochrane, Guy
AU - de Vargas, Colomban
AU - Follows, Michael
AU - Gorsky, Gabriel
AU - Grimsley, Nigel
AU - Guidi, Lionel
AU - Hingamp, Pascal
AU - Iudicone, Daniele
AU - Jaillon, Olivier
AU - Kandels, Stefanie
AU - Karp-Boss, Lee
AU - Karsenti, Eric
AU - Lescot, Magali
AU - Not, Fabrice
AU - Ogata, Hiroyuki
AU - Pesant, Stéphane
AU - Poulton, Nicole
AU - Raes, Jeroen
AU - Sardet, Christian
AU - Sieracki, Mike
AU - Speich, Sabrina
AU - Stemmann, Lars
AU - Sullivan, Matthew B.
AU - Sunagawa, Shinichi
AU - Wincker, Patrick
AU - Eveillard, Damien
AU - Gorsky, Gabriel
AU - Guidi, Lionel
AU - Iudicone, Daniele
AU - Karsenti, Eric
AU - Lombard, Fabien
AU - Ogata, Hiroyuki
AU - Pesant, Stephane
AU - Sullivan, Matthew B.
AU - Wincker, Patrick
AU - de Vargas, Colomban
N1 - Funding Information: Polar Circle expeditions) would not exist without the leadership of the Tara Ocean Foundation and the continuous support of 23 institutes (https://oceans.taraexpeditions.org/). The authors further thank the commitment of the following sponsors: the French CNRS (in particular Groupement de Recherche GDR3280 and the Research Federation for the Study of Global Ocean Systems Ecology and Evolution FR2022/Tara GOSEE), the French Facility for Global Environment (FFEM), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Genoscope/CEA, the French Ministry of Research and the French Government Investissements d’Avenir programmes OCEANOMICS (ANR-11-BTBR-0008), FRANCE GENOMIQUE (ANR-10-INBS-09-08) and MEMO LIFE (ANR-10-LABX-54), the PSL research university (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02) and EMBRC-France (ANR-10-INBS-02). Funding for the collection and processing of the Tara Oceans data set was provided by the NASA Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program under grants NNX11AQ14G, NNX09AU43G, NNX13AE58G and NNX15AC08G (to the University of Maine), the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Remote Sensing of Canada’s New Arctic Frontier and the Canada Foundation for Innovation. The authors also thank agnès b. and E. Bourgois, the Prince Albert II de Monaco Foundation, the Veolia Foundation, Region Bretagne, Lorient Agglomeration, Serge Ferrari, Worldcourier and KAUST for support and commitment. The global sampling effort was made possible by countless scientists and crew who performed sampling aboard the Tara from 2009 to 2013, and the authors thank MERCATOR-CORIOLIS and ACRI-ST for providing daily satellite data during the expeditions. The authors are also grateful to the countries that graciously granted sampling permission. The authors thank N. Le Bescot and N. Henry for their help in designing the figures in this article. C.d.V. thanks the Roscoff Bioinformatics platform ABiMS (http://abims. sb-roscoff.fr). S. Sunagawa thanks the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and ETH Zürich’s high-performance computing facilities for computational support. C.B. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 835067) as well as the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University for a scholar’s fellowship during the 2016–2017 academic year. M.B.S. thanks the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (award 3790) and the US National Science Foundation (awards OCE#1536989 and OCE#1829831) as well as the Ohio Supercomputer for computational support. S.G.A. thanks the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CTM2017-87736-R). F.L. thanks the Institut Universitaire de France as well as the EMBRC platform PIQv for image analysis. S. Sunagawa is supported by ETH Zürich and the Helmut Horten Foundation and by funding from the Swiss National Foundation (205321_184955). The authors declare that all data reported herein are fully and freely available from the date of publication, with no restrictions, and that all of the analyses, publications and ownership of data are free from legal entanglement or restriction by the various nations in whose waters the Tara Oceans expeditions conducted sampling. This article is contribution number 100 of Tara Oceans. Funding Information: Tara oceans was conceived by eric Karsenti to popularize fundamental science using a sailing boat. the tara ocean Foundation proposed the use of its schooner Tara for a global expedition. A scientific component focused on plankton was soon added through inputs from Christian sardet and gaby gorsky in 2007 (zooplankton) and Chris Bowler and Colomban de vargas in 2008 (microbial plankton). the idea was shared with other scientists, leading to the development of an international, multidisciplinary, collaborative consortium aimed at studying oceanic plankton at a planetary scale. Development from a rough concept to a project of its current magnitude required a coalescence of many factors. through 2008, a team of Tara oceans coordinators with complementary expertise began to grow. New members joined the project through word of mouth, and regular meetings were held, approximately every 3 months, to define the structure of the project. this crucial start-up phase was made possible through seed funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR), the French National Centre for scientific Research (CNRs), the european molecular Biology laboratory (emBl), the veolia Foundation and Region Bretagne, which recognized the potential of the project. During this time, the overall collaborative philosophy of the project, the holistic and systematic sampling strategy and the details of the sampling and analysis protocols were established. meetings for project coordination and networking continued over the last 11 years, rotating between Paris, Roscoff (France) and Heidelberg (germany), among other locations. the principles for the consortium were modelled on the basis of a scientific unit at emBl, in which group leaders from different disciplines with interests in the same broad scientific question meet regularly and structure projects with a bottom-up approach. similarly, for Tara oceans, decisions were often made on the fly on the basis of discussions between the coordinators and were overseen by a programme manager, stefanie Kandels. this form of planning represents an entirely different and more agile type of science than what is generally supported by peer-reviewed funding bodies that require an a priori statement of the research design and goals. Although riskier, this blue-sky approach offers opportunities to develop creative ideas that may lead to novel and innovative research directions. Furthermore, Tara oceans is an example of how adventurous science can profit from engaged philanthropists and private entities, such as agnès b., the tara ocean Foundation and other private foundations and companies (see Acknowledgements), to catalyse a new approach for supporting fundamental biological research. Importantly, Tara oceans consortium members invested their own resources in the project, which did not necessarily fit into public mainstream channels of science funding. Finally, as the project gained momentum and credibility, funding from national agencies, including the French government through its Investissement d’Avenir programme (project oCeANomICs), was acquired, covering the substantial costs associated with the processing and sequencing of all samples as well as the general running costs of the project. major catalysts of the project were the flexibility and cost-effectiveness provided by use of a sailing boat to collect plankton samples across the global ocean, and the subsequent use of the most advanced technologies in sequencing, imaging, data analysis and computing onshore at the multiple partner institutions involved. Publisher Copyright: © 2020, Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2020/8/1
Y1 - 2020/8/1
N2 - A planetary-scale understanding of the ocean ecosystem, particularly in light of climate change, is crucial. Here, we review the work of Tara Oceans, an international, multidisciplinary project to assess the complexity of ocean life across comprehensive taxonomic and spatial scales. Using a modified sailing boat, the team sampled plankton at 210 globally distributed sites at depths down to 1,000 m. We describe publicly available resources of molecular, morphological and environmental data, and discuss how an ecosystems biology approach has expanded our understanding of plankton diversity and ecology in the ocean as a planetary, interconnected ecosystem. These efforts illustrate how global-scale concepts and data can help to integrate biological complexity into models and serve as a baseline for assessing ecosystem changes and the future habitability of our planet in the Anthropocene epoch.
AB - A planetary-scale understanding of the ocean ecosystem, particularly in light of climate change, is crucial. Here, we review the work of Tara Oceans, an international, multidisciplinary project to assess the complexity of ocean life across comprehensive taxonomic and spatial scales. Using a modified sailing boat, the team sampled plankton at 210 globally distributed sites at depths down to 1,000 m. We describe publicly available resources of molecular, morphological and environmental data, and discuss how an ecosystems biology approach has expanded our understanding of plankton diversity and ecology in the ocean as a planetary, interconnected ecosystem. These efforts illustrate how global-scale concepts and data can help to integrate biological complexity into models and serve as a baseline for assessing ecosystem changes and the future habitability of our planet in the Anthropocene epoch.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087944187&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85087944187&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41579-020-0364-5
DO - 10.1038/s41579-020-0364-5
M3 - Review article
C2 - 32398798
AN - SCOPUS:85087944187
SN - 1740-1526
VL - 18
SP - 428
EP - 445
JO - Nature Reviews Microbiology
JF - Nature Reviews Microbiology
IS - 8
ER -