Mechanisms shaping dissolved organic matter and microbial community in lake ecosystems

Abstract

Lakes are active components of the global carbon cycle and host a range of processes that degrade and modify dissolved organic matter (DOM). Through the degradation of DOM molecules and the synthesis of new compounds, microbes in aquatic environments strongly and continuously influence chemodiversity, which can feedback to influence microbial diversity. Developing a better understanding of the biodiversity patterns that emerge along spatial and environmental gradients is one of the key objectives of community ecology. A changing climate may affect ecological feedback, including those that affect microbial communities. To maintain the function of a lake ecosystem and predict carbon cycling in the environment, it is increasingly important to understand the coupling between microbial and DOM diversity. To unravel the biotic and abiotic mechanisms that control the structure and patterns of DOM and microbial communities in lakes, we combined high-throughput sequencing and ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry together with a null modeling approach. The advantage of null models is their ability to evaluate the relative influences of stochastic and deterministic assembly processes in both DOM and microbial community assemblages. The present study includes spatiotemporal signatures of DOM and the microbial community in six temperate lakes contrasting continental and Mediterranean climates during the productive season. Different environmental conditions and nutrient sources characterized the studied lakes. Our results have shown high covariance between molecular-level DOM diversity and the diversity of individual microbial communities especially with diversity of microeukaryotes and free-living bacteria indicating their dynamic feedback. We found that the differences between lakes and climatic regions were mainly reflected in the diversity of DOM at the molecular formula-level and the microeukaryota community. Furthermore, using null models the DOM assembly was governed by deterministic variable selection operating consistently and strongly within and among lakes. In contrast, microbial community assembly processes were highly variable across lakes with different trophic status and climatic regions. Difference in the processes governing DOM and microbial composition does not indicate weak coupling between these components, rather it suggests that distinct factors may be influencing microbial communities and DOM assemblages separately. Further understanding of the DOM-microbe coupling (or lack thereof) is key to formulating predictive models of future lake ecology and function.