Abstract
In this study, spatiotemporal investigations were conducted along five cascade dams in the main channel of the North River of China during 2019 to explore bacterioplankton community indicators of water environments in a fragmented, highly regulated river. Bacterioplankton communities were good bioindicators of temporal variation in river environments, especially when considering the bacterial class level. Specifically, the most dominant bacterial classes (Gammaproteobacteria, Oxyphotobacteria, and Actinobacteria) and sub-dominant bacterial classes (Bacteroidia, Betaproteobacteria, and Acidimicrobiia) exhibited obvious temporal variation. Rainfall, water temperature (WT), water transparency (SD), and pH were all highly associated with temporal variation. In contrast, bacterioplankton indicators of spatial variation were limited to individual dominant bacterial classes for individual study periods, while rainfall, total phosphorus (TP), and pH were also associated with spatial variation. Clustering of bacterioplankton community compositions revealed that temporal differences were much stronger than spatial differences, which is consistent with most environmental parameters exhibiting obvious temporal differences, but minimal spatial differences. A possible reason for these observations could be that river fragmentation caused by cascade dams weakened spatial differences in communities, with WT, rainfall, and river runoff playing key roles in these patterns. In conclusion, bacterioplankton communities were good bioindicators of water environments in the fragmented river ecosystem of this study and their temporal variation was more apparent than their spatial variation.
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The datasets generated analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This work was supported by the “Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation” [grant numbers 2021A1515012079, 2019A1515011589]; Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund, CAFS [grant number 2022SJ-TD1]; National Freshwater Genetic Resource Center (FGRC-18537). We are very grateful to all staff members of our team for their assistance during field work. We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.
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Zhao, B., Song, P., Yang, W. et al. Bacterioplankton community indicators for seasonal variation in a fragmented subtropical river. Environ Monit Assess 194, 458 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10101-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10101-z