Abstract
Heavy metals released by anthropogenic activities such as mining trigger profound changes to bacterial communities. In this study we used 16S SSU rRNA gene high-throughput sequencing to characterize the impact of a polymetallic perturbation and other environmental parameters on taxonomic networks within five lacustrine bacterial communities from sites located near Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, Canada. The results showed that community equilibrium was disturbed in terms of both diversity and structure. Moreover, heavy metals, especially cadmium combined with water acidity, induced parallel changes among sites via the selection of resistant OTUs (Operational Taxonomic Unit) and taxonomic dominance perturbations favoring the Alphaproteobacteria. Furthermore, under a similar selective pressure, covariation trends between phyla revealed conservation and parallelism within interphylum interactions. Our study sheds light on the importance of analyzing communities not only from a phylogenetic perspective but also including a quantitative approach to provide significant insights into the evolutionary forces that shape the dynamic of the taxonomic interaction networks in bacterial communities.
Highlights
Anthropogenic activities such as mining and smelting trigger profound damage to aquatic ecosystems (van Dam et al 2002; Eisler 2004)
Bacterial communities are integral service providers (Gutknecht et al 2006), conservation and rehabilitation of an impacted area require a thorough understanding of how multiple interactive species adapt to face such dramatic environmental perturbations
The Nonparametric Shannon Index, which takes into account the fact that possible rare species were not collected during the sampling, was the highest in Opasatica Lake (Opa) (H’ = 4.564), followed by Dasserat Lake (Das) (H’ = 3.834), Turcotte Lake (Tur)
Summary
Anthropogenic activities such as mining and smelting trigger profound damage to aquatic ecosystems (van Dam et al 2002; Eisler 2004). Bacterial communities are integral service providers (Gutknecht et al 2006), conservation and rehabilitation of an impacted area require a thorough understanding of how multiple interactive species adapt to face such dramatic environmental perturbations. Metabolic plasticity is likely to underpin the fundamental contribution bacterioplankton make to aquatic ecosystems (Armitage et al 2003; Comte and del Giorgio 2011). There is some evidence that metabolic pathways of lacustrine bacterioplankton may be compartmentalized between the main phyla (Actinobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, and Bacteroidetes) (Debroas et al 2009). Such functional compartmentalization suggests that interacting networks of taxa may constrain the functional repertoire of the whole microbial community
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