Fast responses of microbial plankton communities associated to regime shifts in vegetated wetlands (free-floating plants vs phytoplankton-dominance): An experimental cross-transplant approach

Abstract

Vegetated wetlands are naturally subjected to changes in their water-level and macrophyte coverage leading to high habitat heterogeneity. The opportunistic ecological strategy of many planktic algae and bacteria makes them suitable for studying adaptive mechanisms to environmental change in wetlands at different temporal and spatial scales. In this study, we assessed the response of microbial aquatic organisms to sudden changes in habitat conditions, resulting from regime shifts involving the presence/absence of a dense floating-macrophyte cover, by means of a 72 h cross-transplant experiment using dialysis bags. Contrasting conditions imposed by the existing regime, such as light availability and dissolved oxygen concentration, accounted for the differences in phytoplankton and picoplankton compositions. Communities newly exposed to improved light and oxygen conditions exhibited a short-term (hours) response of C-strategists algae, such as small flagellated chrysophyceans. The onset of oxygen depletion and light impoverishment favoured the development of anaerobic anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria (AnAnPB) and low-light adapted S-strategists (thin filamentous oscillatoriales) algae in few days. These results provide in-field evidence that phytoplankton and picoplankton assemblages are highly sensitive to environmental changes in a brief time scale, less than 72 h. Thus, these microbial organisms can act as sentinels to fluctuations in vegetated wetlands, also giving a quick response to sudden changes deriving from anthropogenic practices that impact on wetlands water-level and provoke fluctuations in their floating vegetation cover.