Abstract
Prokaryotes play a fundamental role in global ocean biogeochemical cycles. However, how the abundance and metabolic activity of ecologically distinct subgroups (i.e., high nucleic acid (HNA) and low nucleic acid (LNA) cells), and their regulating factors, change in response to changing marine environmental conditions remains poorly understood. Here, we delved into the time-evolving dynamic responses of the HNA and LNA prokaryotic subgroups to declining resource availability and selective grazing by protozoa by conducting a 73-day incubation experiment in a large-volume (117,000 L) macrocosm that facilitates community-level exploration. We found that the metabolic activity of the HNA subgroup was higher than that of the LNA subgroup when the macrocosm was resource replete but that the HNA subgroup declined more rapidly than the LNA subgroup as the resources became increasingly scarce, leading to a steadily increasing contribution of LNA cells to prokaryotic activity. Meanwhile, as resources in the macrocosm became limited, protozoan grazing preference shifted from the HNA to the LNA subgroup and the contributions of the LNA subgroup to the carbon flow within the macrocosm increased. The findings highlight the resilience of LNA cells in resource-limited environments, illuminate the critical role of selective grazing by protozoa in balancing distinct prokaryotic subgroups under changing resource conditions, and demonstrate the complex and adaptive interactions between protozoa and prokaryotes across diverse environmental contexts.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Doug Wallace, Paul Hill, Jianning Wang, Magda Waclawik, Liz Kerrigan, and Jiezhen Xie for their assistance in the experiment. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42188102, 41861144018), the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (Grant No. 2023J05017), and the Marine Economic Development Special Fund Project of Fujian Province of China (Grant No. FJHJF-L-2022-11). Chen Hu was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2021M691863). Rui Zhang was supported by the Innovation Team Project of Universities in Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2023KCXTD028). Xiaowei Chen was supported by the Ph.D. Fellowship of the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University.
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Hu, C., Yu, L., Chen, X. et al. Adaptive strategies of high and low nucleic acid prokaryotes in response to declining resource availability and selective grazing by protozoa. Sci. China Earth Sci. 67, 1872–1884 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-023-1326-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-023-1326-2