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Meroplanktic phytoplankton play a crucial role in responding to peak discharge events in the middle lowland section of the Loire River (France)

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Abstract

Meteorological and hydrological forcings influence phytoplankton at very short-time scales. The effect of turbulence, dilution, light, and nutrients are highly dynamic. Yet, our knowledge of short-term phytoplankton dynamics associated with discharge disturbances and nutrient inputs remains elusive, especially in large rivers. Based on every three-day monitoring, we studied phytoplankton in the middle Loire River (France) and related to the daily variations in water discharge and the physical and chemical parameters. We focused on summer phytoplankton (2013 and 2014), where dissolved inorganic phosphorus concentration was potentially limiting growth. We identified eight discharge events, which increased suspended matter concentration and decreased chlorophyll-a concentration. The most significant environmental drivers of phytoplankton composition were discharge and water temperature, a sensitive proxy for meteorological forcing at short-time scale. The phytoplankton composition responded to changes in hydrology along with three distinct assemblage types, where even small water discharge increase induced a community response. Meroplanktic algae being able to withstand sedimentation and resuspension could take advantage of hydrological peaks, following the benthic retention hypothesis. Our results suggest that short-term dynamics are crucial to understanding community organization and functioning in large river plankton, with meroplankton playing a decisive role in maintaining phytoplankton diversity and ecosystem functioning.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the water basin authority (Agence de l'Eau Loire Bretagne) for providing long-term water quality data and allowing the publication of phytoplankton data. Authors are also grateful to “Electricité de France” for providing data on continuous water temperature measurements for the Middle Loire River. The authors are thankful to Anne Marie Lançon for phytoplankton identification and to Laurence Lanctin, Yannick Bennet, André Dubois, Hervé Couet, and Didier Louvel for their help on the field. AA was supported by the FK 142485 project (National Research, Development and Innovation Office, Hungary) and by the János Bolyai Research. Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2023). We thank Viktória B-Béres and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Funding

The data were collected within the “Eutrophisation-Trends” project during the period 2012-2015 (funds from “Agence de l’Eau Loire Bretagne, “Plan Loire Grandeur Nature” and FEDER European funds).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Rennes, UMR 6553 ECOBIO, Rennes, France

    Alexandrine Pannard

  2. Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 643, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Camille Minaudo

  3. Bi-Eau, 15 Rue Lainé-Laroche, Angers, France

    Maria Leitao

  4. MTA-ÖK Lendület “Momentum” Fluvial Ecology Research Group, HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research, Karolina Street 29, Budapest, Hungary

    Andras Abonyi

  5. WasserCluster Lunz, Dr. Kupelwieser-Prom. 5, Lunz am See, Austria

    Andras Abonyi

  6. INRAE, UR RiverLy - Centre de Lyon-Grenoble Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Villeurbanne, France

    Florentina Moatar

  7. University of Tours, E.A. 6293 GéHCO, Tours, France

    Nathalie Gassama

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Contributions

FM, CM, and NG collected data on physical and chemical parameters; AA and ML collected data on phytoplankton; AP and CM conceptualized the study and performed the data analyses and statistics. AP, CM, NG, and AA wrote the manuscript, with equal contributions from all authors.

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Correspondence to Alexandrine Pannard.

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Guest editors: Viktória B-Béres, Luigi Naselli-Flores, Judit Padisák & Gábor Borics / Trait- Based Approaches in Micro-Algal Ecology

Supplementary Information

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10750_2023_5420_MOESM1_ESM.tiff

Figure S1. Time series of environmental and biological parameters at the station Cinq-Mars-La-Pile. Q: water discharge; SM: suspended matter; Nitrates: nitrates concentration; TP: total phosphorus concentration; DSi: silicate concentration; POC: particulate organic carbon; Temp.: temperature; radiation: solar radiation; Chl-a: total pigment concentration; DIP: dissolved inorganic phosphorus concentration; DOC: dissolved organic carbon concentration; Phy biom: phytoplankton biomass calculated from cell counts and grouped by class; Tot biom: total phytoplankton biomass calculated from cell counts; Turnover: turnover rate per day. Supplementary file1 (TIFF 11025 kb)

10750_2023_5420_MOESM2_ESM.tiff

Figure S2. Variance partitioning of taxa biomass depending on time with julian day (X1), water temperature (X2) and dissolved inorganic phosphorus (X3), performed with the function varpart of the package vegan. The analysis was performed on all data, on summer 2013 and on summer 2014. Supplementary file2 (TIFF 8115 kb)

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Pannard, A., Minaudo, C., Leitao, M. et al. Meroplanktic phytoplankton play a crucial role in responding to peak discharge events in the middle lowland section of the Loire River (France). Hydrobiologia 851, 869–895 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-023-05420-2

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