Determinism governs the succession of disturbed bacterioplankton communities in a coastal maricultural ecosystem

Abstract

Bacterioplankton community is the major engine that drives the biogeochemical cycling of various nutrient and essential elements in the coastal ecosystem. Unraveling the mechanisms governing the succession of such complex bacterioplankton communities in dynamic environment is a challenging issue in environmental science. In this study, we investigated the diversity patterns and succession mechanisms of both free-living and particle-attached bacterioplankton communities that have been exposed to low oxygen and typhoon Lekima. The community evenness was the lowest in August when the temperature was high and dissolved oxygen was low. Similar patterns in community succession were observed for free-living and particle-attached bacterioplankton community after the passing through of typhoon Lekima. Both the free-living and particle-attached bacterioplankton communities in the surface and bottom water columns were strongly affected by geo-environmental factors, among which temperature was the common factor, suggesting that the metabolic theory of ecology also underlie the dynamic patterns of bacterioplankton communities. Although the surface and bottom bacterioplankton compositions were initially different taxonomically and shaped by different environmental conditions, they followed a similar succession pattern over the sampling months. Temperature, dissolved inorganic carbon and dissolved inorganic phosphorus were the major factors associated with the variations of surface bacterioplankton ASVs. Time-decay relationship, in which community similarity decreases with increasing time interval, was clearly observed. Such pattern shall be attributed to the combined effects of time and the changing environmental factors over the sampling months, rather than time alone. Integrating multiple lines of evidences, we demonstrated that determinism governed the succession of both free-living and particle-attached bacterioplankton communities in the coastal maricultural ecosystem, with higher stochastic ratio in habitable months (i.e. fall). This study is expected to provide valuable mechanistic insights into the succession of disturbed complex bacterioplankton communities.

Keywords: Community succession; Determinism; Environmental perturbations; Free-living and particle-attached bacterioplankton; Low oxygen; Typhoon.