TY - JOUR T1 - Global drivers of eukaryotic plankton biogeography in the sunlit ocean JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.09.08.287524 SP - 2020.09.08.287524 AU - Guilhem Sommeria-Klein AU - Romain Watteaux AU - Daniele Iudicone AU - Chris Bowler AU - Hélène Morlon Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/09/09/2020.09.08.287524.abstract N2 - Eukaryotic plankton are a core component of marine ecosystems with exceptional taxonomic and ecological diversity. Yet how their ecology interacts with the environment to drive global distribution patterns is poorly understood. Here, we use Tara Oceans metabarcoding data covering all the major ocean basins combined with a probabilistic model of taxon co-occurrence to compare the biogeography of 70 major groups of eukaryotic plankton. We uncover two main axes of biogeographic variation. First, more diverse groups display stronger biogeographic structure. Second, large-bodied consumers are structured by oceanic basins, mostly via the main currents, while small-bodied phototrophs are structured by latitude, with a comparatively stronger influence of biotic conditions. Our study highlights striking differences in biogeographies across plankton groups and disentangles their determinants at the global scale.One-sentence summary Eukaryotic plankton biogeography and its determinants at global scale reflect differences in ecology and body size.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -