Epiphytic bacteria make an important contribution to heterotrophic bacterial production in a humic boreal lake

Abstract

AME Aquatic Microbial Ecology Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials AME 79:247-257 (2017) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/ame01835 Epiphytic bacteria make an important contribution to heterotrophic bacterial production in a humic boreal lake Jussi Vesterinen1,*, Shawn P. Devlin1,2, Jari Syväranta1,3, Roger I. Jones1 1University of Jyväskylä, Department of Biological and Environmental Science, PO Box 35, 40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland 2Flathead Lake Biological Station, University of Montana, Polson, MT 59860, USA 3University of Eastern Finland, Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, PO Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland *Corresponding author: jussi.p.vesterinen@jyu.fi ABSTRACT: Bacterial production (BP) in lakes has generally only been measured in the pelagic zone without accounting for littoral BP, and studies of BP at the whole-lake scale are very scarce. In the dystrophic humic lakes, which are common throughout the boreal region, low light penetration through water has been assumed to seriously limit available habitats for littoral organisms. However, many highly humic boreal lakes have extensive partly submerged vegetation around the lake perimeter which can provide well-lit substrata for highly productive epiphyton. We measured epiphytic BP on the littoral vegetation and pelagic BP in a small highly humic boreal lake in Finland during an open-water season and extrapolated the BP rates to the whole lake. Pelagic BP dominated the combined BP over the study period, but the epiphytic BP contributed an average of 24% to overall BP over the sampling period and was almost equal to pelagic BP in July. According to these results, a substantial component of BP has been previously overlooked in the lake when BP has been measured only from the pelagic. Our study demonstrates that the role of the littoral zone in BP in highly humic lakes has previously been understated, and needs to be taken into account in assessments of whole-lake carbon cycling and metabolism. KEY WORDS: Littoral · Periphyton · Pelagic · Autotrophic · Heterotrophic Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Vesterinen J, Devlin SP, Syväranta J, Jones RI (2017) Epiphytic bacteria make an important contribution to heterotrophic bacterial production in a humic boreal lake. Aquat Microb Ecol 79:247-257. https://doi.org/10.3354/ame01835 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in AME Vol. 79, No. 3. Online publication date: July 05, 2017 Print ISSN: 0948-3055; Online ISSN: 1616-1564 Copyright © 2017 Inter-Research.