Hyperspectral ocean color encodes global eukaryotic phytoplankton community structure
- 1Boston University
Abstract
Phytoplankton community composition (PCC) impacts global ocean change across scales. Combining the taxonomic resolution of in situ methods with the spatiotemporal coverage of satellite ocean color remains a major challenge. Phytoplankton pigments link PCC to ocean color; past work has demonstrated that 4-6 pigment-based groups can be reconstructed from hyperspectral remote sensing reflectance (Rrs({lambda})). Alternately, metabarcoding approaches reveal thousands of taxa to the species level, but the links between optics and genes are less clear. Here, we compiled a global, coincident dataset of hyperspectral Rrs({lambda}), pigments, and 18S rRNA gene sequences. We used a bio-optical model to produce the relative contributions of 13 eukaryotic phytoplankton classes identified by metabarcoding with high confidence in most cases. Model coefficients were highly spectrally correlated between genes and pigments, revealing the strong PCC signal within Rrs({lambda}). This proof-of-concept study establishes a foundation for detecting eukaryotic PCC beyond pigments in the PACE era.
Related
- Contrasting fish and phytoplankton community structure along a seasonally dynamic regulated Afro-tropical river
- Evaluating a multispectral miniaturised fluorometer with three excitation channels for predicting phytoplankton community structure indices from BGC-Argo float observations
- Comparative assessment of phytoplankton community using different filtration methods based on environmental DNA metabarcoding—a case study of Caohai Wetland
- Community-level impacts of low-level diesel exposure on a natural cold-temperate/subarctic phytoplankton assemblage
- Abundant taxa dominate the bacterial and eukaryotic community composition in a typical karst mountainous river.
BibTeX
@misc{kramer2026hyperspectral,
title = {{Hyperspectral ocean color encodes global eukaryotic phytoplankton community structure}},
author = {S. J. Kramer and R. El Hourany},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.09.750502},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.09.750502v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Hyperspectral ocean color encodes global eukaryotic phytoplankton community structure
AU - S. J. Kramer
AU - R. El Hourany
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/09
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.09.750502
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.09.750502v1
AB - Phytoplankton community composition (PCC) impacts global ocean change across scales. Combining the taxonomic resolution of in situ methods with the spatiotemporal coverage of satellite ocean color remains a major challenge. Phytoplankton pigments link PCC to ocean color; past work has demonstrated that 4-6 pigment-based groups can be reconstructed from hyperspectral remote sensing reflectance (Rrs({lambda})). Alternately, metabarcoding approaches reveal thousands of taxa to the species level, but the links between optics and genes are less clear. Here, we compiled a global, coincident dataset of hyperspectral Rrs({lambda}), pigments, and 18S rRNA gene sequences. We used a bio-optical model to produce the relative contributions of 13 eukaryotic phytoplankton classes identified by metabarcoding with high confidence in most cases. Model coefficients were highly spectrally correlated between genes and pigments, revealing the strong PCC signal within Rrs({lambda}). This proof-of-concept study establishes a foundation for detecting eukaryotic PCC beyond pigments in the PACE era.
ER -