Strong linkages between dissolved organic matter and the aquatic bacterial community in an urban river

Abstract

Aquatic bacterial communities play an important role in biogeochemical cycling in river ecosystems; however, knowledge of the linkages between bacterial communities and dissolved organic matter (DOM) in urban rivers is limited. Here, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and parallel factor (PARAFAC) modeling of excitation-emission fluorescence spectroscopy were used to analyze the compositions, co-occurrence patterns, and interactions with chromophoric DOM (CDOM) of bacterial communities in urban river water samples influenced by different human activities. The results revealed that two protein-like components accounted for 65.2 ± 9.56% of the total variability in all three fluorescence components, which suggests that CDOM in urban rivers is mainly a microbial source. In addition to pH and DO, CDOM is also an important factor affecting bacterial community structure, and the main classes (Gammaproteobacteria and Clostridia) and genera (Limnohabitans and Alpinimonas) showed strong positive correlations with terrestrial humic-like C1 and tryptophan-like C2, respectively. When autotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria coexist in urban rivers, the production and degradation of CDOM will occur simultaneously. Furthermore, the riverine bacterial co-occurrence network had a nonrandom modular structure, which was mainly driven by classification correlation and bacterial function. The high abundance of genes related to xenobiotic metabolism, carbon metabolism and nitrogen metabolism in the urban river indicated that anthropogenic activity may be the dominant selective force altering the bacterial communities. Overall, our results provide a novel view for the assembly of bacterial communities in urban river ecosystems under the influence of different human activities.