PH influences the importance of niche-related and neutral processes in lacustrine bacterioplankton assembly.

ABSTRACT: pH is an important factor that shapes the structure of bacterial communities. However, we have very limited information about the patterns and processes by which overall bacterioplankton communities assemble across wide pH gradients in natural freshwater lakes. Here, we used pyrosequencing to analyze the bacterioplankton communities in 25 discrete freshwater lakes in Denmark with pH levels ranging from 3.8 to 8.8. We found that pH was the key factor impacting lacustrine bacterioplankton community assembly. More acidic lakes imposed stronger environmental filtering, which decreased the richness and evenness of bacterioplankton operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and largely shifted community composition. Although environmental filtering was determined to be the most important determinant of

SUBMITTER: Ren L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4393436 | biostudies-literature | 2015 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature