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Primary production under hypertrophic conditions and its relationship with bacterial production

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Abstract

In shallow hypertrophic lakes where light availability restricts the growth of macrophytes and benthic phytoplankton, pelagic phytoplankton modulates importantly ecosystem production and the energy transfer to heterotrophic bacteria. Diel and seasonal variations in primary production (PP) were studied in the hypertrophic Albufera de Valencia (Spain). Additionally, the relationship between PP and heterotrophic bacterial production (BP) was assessed. PP was extremely high, exceeding most values reported for hypertrophic lakes to date. PP displayed marked diurnal variations defined by the solar radiation curve. Likewise, PP changed importantly across seasons. Minimum PP coincided with maximum water transparency and short water residence times in winter, whereas maximum PP was observed in late spring associated with high chlorophyll a. The spring PP maximum contrasted with the summer maximum often observed in hypertrophic lakes. When compared to spring PP values, summer PP values were lower as a result of strong nitrogen limitation. In contrast to PP, BP remained fairly constant across seasons. Nonetheless, there was a joint diminution during increased water transparency followed by an increase in early spring. Phytoplankton was always the most relevant input to particulate carbon production, but the BP/PP ratio showed clear seasonal variations. The BP/PP ratio was minimum in spring, low in summer and highest in winter. The extracellular dissolved organic carbon released by phytoplankton was sufficient to meet bacterial carbon demand in all experimental dates, suggesting that allochthonous carbon sources play a minor role in sustaining BP, though they cannot be excluded. However, we hypothesize that high availability of dissolved organic carbon might explain the lack of coupling observed between BP and PP.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the rangers of the Oficina Técnica Devesa-Albufera, C. Blasco and X. Soria for their assistance in the field. We are grateful to J.M. Soria and O. Kramer for their help in the laboratory activities and to M.D. Sendra for phytoplankton data on January and April 2011. We also thank the Agencia Estatal de Metereología (AEMET) for providing data on wind and solar radiation. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the project CGL2009-12229 and grant BES-2010-032212.

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  1. Department of Microbiology and Ecology, ICBiBE, University of Valencia, E-46100, Burjassot, Valencia, Spain

    Gabriela Onandia, Maria Rosa Miracle & Eduardo Vicente

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  1. Gabriela Onandia
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  2. Maria Rosa Miracle
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  3. Eduardo Vicente
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Correspondence to Gabriela Onandia.

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Onandia, G., Miracle, M.R. & Vicente, E. Primary production under hypertrophic conditions and its relationship with bacterial production. Aquat Ecol 48, 447–463 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-014-9497-9

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