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Spatial and environmental factors contributing to phytoplankton biogeography and biodiversity in mountain ponds across a large geographic area

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Abstract

Exploring phytoplankton biodiversity and biogeographic patterns, and the factors that control them, can help to understand the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. We selected mountain ponds with minimal anthropogenic disturbance to reveal the biogeographic patterns of phytoplankton and to assess the influence of spatial and environmental factors on phytoplankton biodiversity. On a large regional scale, the phytoplankton communities in the mountain ponds showed geographic patterns—the community composition differed between eastern and western areas. A total of seven phyla and 73 genera were identified. Alpha diversity indices did not significantly correlate with nutrient concentrations. Environmental factors and principal coordinates of neighbour matrices together explained 28.5% of the total variation in phytoplankton community composition in the 41 ponds, with each uniquely explaining 3.0% and 14.4% of the total variation, respectively. Therefore, compared with environmental factors, spatial factors predominantly contributed to the distribution of phytoplankton across the study area. With increasing trophic status, the relative influence of spatial factors decreased, while that of environmental factors increased.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51979236), Sichuan Science and Technology Program (2019YFH0127), Water Conservancy Science and Technology project of Shaanxi Province (2019slkj-1) and the Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Eco-hydraulics in Northwest Arid Region (2019KFKT-1). ML was also funded as Tang Scholar by Cyrus Tang Foundation and Northwest A&F University.

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  1. Chao Chang and Li Gao have contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, 712100, People’s Republic of China

    Chao Chang, Jing Wei, Ning Ma, Qiang He & Ming Li

  2. Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne, VIC, 8001, Australia

    Li Gao

  3. State Key Laboratory of Eco-Hydraulic in Northwest Arid Region of China, Xi’an University of Technology, Xian, 710048, Shaanxi, China

    Baozhu Pan

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  1. Chao Chang
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Contributions

ML conceived the study. GL designed the experiment. JW and NM conducted sample collection. QH analysed the sample. ML and CC carried out the data analysis. GL, BP and CC wrote the paper. ML and BP revised the paper.

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Correspondence to Ming Li.

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Chang, C., Gao, L., Wei, J. et al. Spatial and environmental factors contributing to phytoplankton biogeography and biodiversity in mountain ponds across a large geographic area. Aquat Ecol 55, 721–735 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-021-09857-2

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