Successional trajectories of bacterioplankton community over the complete cycle of a sudden phytoplankton bloom in the Xiangshan Bay, East China Sea

Abstract

Phytoplankton bloom has imposed ecological concerns worldwide; however, few studies have been focused on the successional trajectories of bacterioplankton community over a complete phytoplankton bloom cycle. Using 16S pyrosequencing, we investigated how the coastal bacterioplankton community compositions (BCCs) respond to a phytoplankton bloom in the Xiangshan Bay, East China Sea. The results showed that BCCs were significantly different among the pre-bloom, bloom, and after-bloom stages, with the lowest bacterial diversity at the bloom phase. The BCCs at the short-term after-bloom phase showed a rapid but incomplete recovery to the pre-bloom phase, evidenced by 69.8% similarity between pre-bloom and after-bloom communities. This recovery was parallel with the dynamics of the operational taxonomic units (OTUs) affiliated with Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria, whose abundance enriched when bloom occur, and decreased after-bloom, and vice versa. Collectively, the results showed that the BCCs were sensitive to algal-induced disturbances, but could recover to a certain extent after bloom. In addition, OTUs which enriched or decreased during this process are closely associated with this temporal pattern, thus holding the potential to evaluate and indicate the succession stage of phytoplankton bloom.

Keywords: Bacterioplankton community; Phytoplankton bloom; Pyrosequencing; Resilience.