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Protist Interactions and Seasonal Dynamics in the Coast of Yantai, Northern Yellow Sea of China as Revealed by Metabarcoding

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Abstract

Facilitated by the high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technique, the importance of protists to aquatic systems has been widely acknowledged in the last decade. However, information of protistan biotic interactions and seasonal dynamics is much less known in the coast ecosystem with intensive anthropic disturbance. In this study, year-round changes of protist community composition and diversity in the coastal water of Yantai, a city along the northern Yellow Sea in China, were investigated using HTS for the V4 region of 18S rDNA. The interactions among protist groups were also analyzed using the co-occurrence network. Data analyses showed that Alveolata, Chlorophyta, and Stramenopiles are the most dominant phytoplanktonic protists in the investigated coastal area. The community composition displayed strong seasonal variation. The abundant families Dino-Group-I-Clade-1 and Ulotri-chales_X had higher proportions in spring and summer, while Bathycoccaceae exhibited higher ratios in autumn and winter. Alpha diversities (Shannon and Simpson) were the highest in autumn and the lowest in spring (ANOVA test, P < 0.05). Nutrients (SiO42−, PO43−), total organic carbon (TOC), and pH seemed to drive the variation of alpha diversity, while temperature, PO43− and TON were the most significant factors influencing the whole protist community. Co-variance network analyses reveal frequent co-occurrence events among ciliates, chlorophytes and dinoflagellate, suggesting biotic interactions have been induced by predation, parasitism and mixotrophy.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31672251, 31772413), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS (No. 2019216), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDA23050303), and the Key Research Project of Frontier Science, CAS (No. QYZDBSSW-DQC013-1). We specially thank Prof. Bin Ma from Zhejiang University for his kindly help in the co-occurrence network analyses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Ocean, Yantai University, Yantai, 264003, China

    Yingjun Fu & Daode Ji

  2. Key Laboratory of Coastal Environmental Processes and Ecological Remediation, Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai, 264003, China

    Pengfei Zheng, Xiaoli Zhang & Qianqian Zhang

  3. Center for Ocean Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Pengfei Zheng, Xiaoli Zhang & Qianqian Zhang

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  1. Yingjun Fu
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  2. Pengfei Zheng
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Correspondence to Qianqian Zhang or Daode Ji.

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Fu, Y., Zheng, P., Zhang, X. et al. Protist Interactions and Seasonal Dynamics in the Coast of Yantai, Northern Yellow Sea of China as Revealed by Metabarcoding. J. Ocean Univ. China 19, 961–974 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-020-4461-x

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