Abstract
Bacterioplankton community composition has become the center of research attention in recent years. Bacteria associated with toxic cyanobacteria blooms have attracted considerable interest. However, little is known about the environmental factors driving the bacteria community, including the impact of invasive cyanobacteria. Therefore, our aim has been to determine the relationships between heterotrophic bacteria and phytoplankton community composition across 24 Polish lakes with different contributions of cyanobacteria including the invasive species Raphidiopsis raciborskii. This analysis revealed that cyanobacteria were present in 16 lakes, while R. raciborskii occurred in 14 lakes. Our results show that bacteria communities differed between lakes dominated by cyanobacteria and lakes with minor contributions of cyanobacteria but did not differ between lakes with R. raciborskii and other lakes. Physical factors, including water and Secchi depth, were the major drivers of bacteria and phytoplankton community composition. However, in lakes dominated by cyanobacteria, bacterial community composition was also influenced by biotic factors such as the amount of R. raciborskii, chlorophyll-a and total phytoplankton biomass. Thus, our study provides novel evidence on the influence of environmental factors and R. raciborskii on lake bacteria communities.
Highlights
The environmental factors that drive the phytoplankton and zooplankton community composition have been at the center of attention of scientists for many years
The invasive cyanobacterium R. raciborskii occurred in 14 lakes that includes freshwaters belonging mainly to CyanoDominantLakes with a biomass ranging from 0.02 to 10 mg L−1 and contributions of up to 30% in the total phytoplankton biomass (Tables 1 and S2)
The presented results are based on a broad-scale study conducted to determine the relationships between heterotrophic bacteria and phytoplankton community composition across a variety of lakes with different contribution of cyanobacteria and the invasive cyanobacterium Raphidiopsis raciborskii
Summary
The environmental factors that drive the phytoplankton and zooplankton community composition have been at the center of attention of scientists for many years. Studies have typically focused on local abiotic variables including temperature, light conditions, nutrient concentrations and their ratio, pH and conductivity, and they have addressed biotic factors [1,2,3,4,5]. Bacteria were often considered as part of the microbial loop responsible for the demineralization of organic matter in the nutrient cycle and energy flow [3,6,7,8,9,10]. Bacteria have been considered as environmentally friendly agents which mitigate cyanobacteria blooms and biodegrade cyanotoxins from water and sediments [11,12,13,14]
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