Abstract:
Metadata record for data from ASAC Project 2353
See the link below for public details on this project.
---- Public Summary from Project ----
Recently it has been established that the speciation process may be faster within certain systems or species due to strong selection pressure. Potential candidates are the dinoflagellates present in lakes that have been isolated from the sea in the
... geologically recent past. However, due to their small size, the only way to distinguish these species, has been on microscopic morphologic differences. However, with the development of molecular techniques it has now become possible to look at genetic differences between different species, populations, or even individuals. Previous work has shown that the ribosomal DNA is a suitable molecular marker to study phylogenetic differences in a number of species. Specific work with dinoflagellates has further shown that dinoflagellate population of the same species or species complex can be differentiated based on the genomic sequence of large subunit ribosomal DNA, and that populations of the same geographic origin cluster together. Within this project we propose to study the species composition and taxonomy of dinoflagellates in Antarctic saline lakes. We expect to find differences in species composition as well as genetic differences among the different populations, when lakes are compared to each other and to the sea.
Data for this project has been collected from Ace Lake, Highway Lake and Pendant Lake.
The fields in this dataset include:
Date
Depth
Location
Dinoflagellates
Strombidium
Ciliates 
