Near streambed flow shapes microbial guilds within and across trophic levels in fluvial biofilms

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Ute Risse-Buhl - , Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Author)
  • Christine Anlanger - , Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (Author)
  • Antonis Chatzinotas - , Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig University, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle—Jena—Leipzig (Author)
  • Christian Noss - , University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute (Author)
  • Andreas Lorke - , University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (Author)
  • Markus Weitere - , Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Author)

Abstract

Flow is an important physical driver of biofilm communities. Here, we tested the effects of the near bed flows in two mountainous stream reaches on the structure of biofilm microbial guilds (autotrophs, heterotrophic bacteria, and heterotrophic protists) within and across trophic levels. Near bed flow velocity and turbulent kinetic energy were important physical drivers for structuring the communities within and across guilds of the multitrophic fluvial biofilms. The effects of flow were nested in a seasonal and spatial (across-streams) context. Changes in physicochemical factors (temperature, light, dissolved carbon, and nutrients) along the reaches were alike in both streams suggesting that environmental boundary conditions at larger temporal scales were responsible for the seasonal differences of biofilm communities, whereas locally microbial diversity was shaped by near bed flow. Typically, the abundance of autotrophs increased with flow, indicating that biofilms shifted toward increasing autotrophy with increasing shear forces. Filamentous autotrophs seemed to provide protected habitats from the shear forces for smaller sized bacteria. Heterotrophic protist abundance decreased with flow leading to decreasing grazer to prey ratio. Bacteria thus benefitted from a reduction in grazing pressure at faster flowing, more turbulent sites. Our results suggest that near bed flow can impact the magnitude and direction of matter fluxes through the microbial food web and possibly affect ecosystem functioning of fluvial biofilms.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2261-2277
Number of pages17
JournalLimnology and Oceanography
Volume65
Issue number10
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2020
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas