Mechanism of Algal Community Dynamics Driven by the Seasonal Water Bacterial Community in a Stratified Drinking Water Reservoir

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Phytoplankton and bacteria are crucial components of aquatic food webs, playing critical roles in the structure and function of freshwater ecosystems. However, there are few studies on how the algal and bacterial communities interact and respond to changing environmental conditions in the water reservoirs. Thus, the ecological interaction relationship between the temporal succession of the phytoplankton community and the bacterial community was investigated using 16S rDNA high-throughput sequencing and a co-occurrence network in the Lijiahe Reservoir. The results showed that Bacillariophyta and Chlorophyta were also dominant taxa in the phytoplankton community. In August, Cyanobacteria replaced Bacillariophyta as the second-most dominant taxa, with an average relative abundance of 30.13%. DNA sequencing showed that Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes dominated throughout the year. Proteobacteria reached a maximum relative abundance of 71.68% in July. Acidobacteria and Deinococcus-Thermus, which were rare taxa, reached maximum relative abundances of 10.20% and 5.56%, respectively. The co-occurrence network showed that the association between algae and bacteria was mainly positive, indicating that the interaction between them may be dominated by mutualism. As a keystone taxa, Methylotenera was significantly and positively related to Chlorella. Scenedesmus was also a keystone taxa and was significantly and negatively correlated with various bacteria, such as Methylobacter, Solitalea, and Rhodoferax. An RDA analysis showed that the succession of algal and bacterial communities was significantly regulated by water temperature, pH, and conductivity, and the environmental factors explained 93.1% and 90% of the variation in the algal community and bacterial community, respectively. The results will provide a scientific basis for exploring the micro-ecological driving mechanism of the interaction between algae and bacteria in deep drinking water reservoir ecosystems.