Journal Article

Low shifts in salinity determined assembly processes and network stability of microeukaryotic plankton communities in a subtropical urban reservoir

Ren, Kexin, Peng, Feng, Xiao, Peng, Yang, Jun, Logares, Ramiro, Gao, Xiaofei, Mo, Yuanyuan, Jeppesen, Erik, Xue, Yuanyuan

2021

Overview

Background Freshwater salinization may result in significant changes of microbial community composition and diversity, with implications for ecosystem processes and function. Earlier research has revealed the importance of large shifts in salinity on microbial physiology and ecology, whereas studies on the effects of smaller or narrower shifts in salinity on the microeukaryotic community in inland waters are scarce. Our aim was to unveil community assembly mechanisms and the stability of microeukaryotic plankton networks at low shifts in salinity. Results Here, we analyzed a high-resolution time series of plankton data from an urban reservoir in subtropical China over 13 consecutive months following one periodic salinity change ranging from 0 to 6.1‰. We found that (1) salinity increase altered the community composition and led to a significant decrease of plankton diversity, (2) salinity change influenced microeukaryotic plankton community assembly primarily by regulating the deterministic-stochastic balance, with deterministic processes becoming more important with increased salinity, and (3) core plankton subnetwork robustness was higher at low-salinity levels, while the satellite subnetworks had greater robustness at the medium-/high-salinity levels. Our results suggest that the influence of salinity, rather than successional time, is an important driving force for shaping microeukaryotic plankton community dynamics. Conclusions Our findings demonstrate that at low salinities, even small increases in salinity are sufficient to exert a selective pressure to reduce the microeukaryotic plankton diversity and alter community assembly mechanism and network stability. Our results provide new insights into plankton ecology of inland urban waters and the impacts of salinity change in the assembly of microbiotas and network architecture. -E3MKQHtp7WR1f_cJEBdqX Video abstract

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Bioinformatics / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Biomedicine / Community composition / Community ecology / Core taxa / Drought / Ecology / Ecosystems / Fresh water / Inland waters / Medical Microbiology / Microbial Ecology / Microbial Genetics and Genomics / Microbiology / Microbiota (Symbiotic organisms) / Microeukaryotic plankton / Network stability / Organisms / Physiological aspects / Plankton / Precipitation / Salinity / Salinity effects / Satellite taxa / Soils, Salts in / Stochastic models / Stochastic processes / Subtropical reservoir / Time series / Virology