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Fjords of the western and northern regions of Svalbard harbour distinct bacterioplankton community structures

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Abstract

Fjords are highly dynamic ecosystems that are known to be sentinels to climate change due to increased glaciomarine interactions. The convergence and mixing of warm Atlantic water (AtW) and cold Arctic water (ArW) is known to influence the hydrodynamics and ecology of the Arctic fjords. However, most past studies were limited to single-fjord ecosystems, determining the baseline knowledge of inter-fjord comparison on bacterioplankton diversity and distribution patterns. In the present study, we investigated the bacterial diversity and community composition across three Arctic fjords located in the western and northern regions of Svalbard. Our observations show that the bacterial community structure varied significantly among the fjords, while abundant Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) were widespread (n = 100) between all the samples and rare OTUs (n = 2221) mainly contributed to these differences. Phylogenetic classification revealed that Alpha (27.3–55%) and Gamma-proteobacteria (16–51.3%), followed by Bacteroidota (17–35.7%) were dominant in the St.Jonsfjorden and Magdalenefjorden, while Verrucomicrobiota (up to 84.19%) and Actinobacteriota (up to 76.5%) were predominant in the Raudfjorden. Temperature, dissolved inorganic phosphate (DIP) and depth were found to significantly influence the community composition of abundant bacterial groups, whereas the rare bacterial groups were affected by temperature, DIP, dissolved inorganic nitrate (DIN), ammonium and depth. A comparative meta-analysis along with Kongsfjorden and Krossfjorden also showed that each fjord had a significantly different bacterioplankton community structure.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the NCBI repository, Bioproject number: PRJNA859926). Submission information can be found at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra.

Code availability

All the codes used in the current study are from R Packages, where the source codes are publicly available.

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Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank the Director of NCPOR for his support and encouragement. The present research work is a part of the Indian scientific expedition to the Arctic in 2019. The authors thank Mr. Petr Vojáček (captain) and Mr. Jan Pospíšil (technician) of R/V Clione, Czech Arctic Research Station, for their support and assistance. Heartfelt thanks to Mr. Sourav Chatterjee and Dr. N.S. Magesh, NCPOR, for their help in analyzing remote sensing data and making sampling maps. The authors thank Dr. Ross-Lynne Gibb, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), Makhanda, South Africa for proofreading this manuscript. This is NCPOR contribution number: J-45/2022-23.

Funding

This work was supported by National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, Ministry of Earth Sciences (Govt. of. India).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arctic Ecology and Biogeochemistry Division, National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, Ministry of Earth Sciences (Govt. of India), Vasco-da-Gama, Goa, India

    Siddarthan Venkatachalam & Kottekkatu Padinchati Krishnan

  2. Department of Aquatic Environment Management, Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS), Madavana, Kerala, India

    Anu Gopinath

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  1. Siddarthan Venkatachalam
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Contributions

SV and KPK contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by SV and AG. The first draft of the manuscript was written by SV and review edited by AG and KPK. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kottekkatu Padinchati Krishnan.

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Venkatachalam, S., Gopinath, A. & Krishnan, K.P. Fjords of the western and northern regions of Svalbard harbour distinct bacterioplankton community structures. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 39, 57 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-022-03493-0

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