The composition of the marine phytoplankton community has been shown to impact many biogeochemical processes and marine ecosystem services. A variety of methods exist to characterize phytoplankton community composition (PCC), with varying degrees of taxonomic resolution. Accordingly, the resulting PCC determinations are dependent on the method used. Here, we use surface ocean samples collected in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans to compare high‐performance liquid chromatography pigment‐based PCC to four other methods: quantitative cell imaging, flow cytometry, and 16S and 18S rRNA amplicon sequencing. These methods allow characterization of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic PCC across a wide range of size classes. PCC estimates of many taxa resolved at the class level (e.g., diatoms) show strong positive correlations across methods, while other groups (e.g., dinoflagellates) are not well captured by one or more methods. Since variations in phytoplankton pigment concentrations are related to changes in optical properties, this combined dataset expands the potential scope of ocean color remote sensing by associating PCC at the genus‐ and species‐level with group‐ or class‐level PCC from pigments. Quantifying the strengths and limitations of pigment‐based PCC methods compared to PCC assessments from amplicon sequencing, imaging, and cytometry methods is the first step toward the robust validation of remote sensing approaches to quantify PCC from space.

中文翻译：

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面向全球应用的浮游植物群落组成方法的综合

海洋浮游植物群落的组成已被证明会影响许多生物地球化学过程和海洋生态系统服务。存在多种方法来表征浮游植物群落组成（PCC），具有不同程度的分类分辨率。因此，所得的 PCC 确定取决于所使用的方法。在这里，我们使用在北大西洋和北太平洋收集的表层海洋样本，将基于颜料的高效液相色谱 PCC 与其他四种方法进行比较：定量细胞成像、流式细胞术以及 16S 和 18S rRNA 扩增子测序。这些方法可以对各种尺寸类别的原核和真核 PCC 进行表征。PCC 对在类水平上解析的许多类群（例如硅藻）的估计显示出跨方法的强正相关性，而其他类群（例如甲藻）不能通过一种或多种方法很好地捕获。由于浮游植物色素浓度的变化与光学特性的变化有关，因此该组合数据集通过将属和种级别的 PCC 与来自色素的类群或类级别的 PCC 相关联，扩大了海洋颜色遥感的潜在范围。与扩增子测序、成像和细胞计数方法的 PCC 评估相比，量化基于色素的 PCC 方法的优点和局限性，是对从太空量化 PCC 的遥感方法进行稳健验证的第一步。