Abstract
Microorganisms are fundamental for the functioning of marine ecosystems and are involved in the decomposition of organic matter, transformation of nutrients and circulation of biologically-important chemicals. Based on the complexity of the natural geographic characteristics of the Changjiang River Estuary, the geographic distribution of sedimentary microorganisms and the causes of this distribution are largely unexplored. In this work, the surface sediment samples from the adjacent sea area of the Changjiang River Estuary were collected. Their prokaryotic diversity was examined by high-throughput sequencing technology, and the environmental factors of the bacterial community were investigated. The results indicated that the distribution of prokaryotic communities in the sediments of the study areas showed obvious spatial heterogeneity. The sampling sequences divided the sample regions into three distinct clusters. Each geographic region had a unique community structure, although Proteobacteria, Bacteroidota, Desulfobacterota, Acidobacteriota, and Actinobacteriota all existed in these three branches. Canonical correspondence analysis demonstrated that prokaryotic diversity and community distribution were significantly correlated with the geographic location of sediment, seawater depth, and in particular, nutrient content (e.g., total phosphorus, total organic carbon and dissolved oxygen). Moreover, it was found for the first time that the metal ions obviously affected the composition and distribution of the prokaryotic community in this area. In general, this work provides new insights into the structural characteristics and driving factors of prokaryotic communities under the background of the ever-changing Changjiang River Estuary.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Public Technology Service Center, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences for assistance with sample analysis.
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Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 32000074 and 42176130; the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangxi under contract No. AA21196002; the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province under contract No. ZR2021MD044; the Tai Mountain Industry Leading Talent of Shandong under contract No. 2019TSCYCX-06; the Key Research and Development Program of Shandong Province under contract No. 2021TZXD008; the Biosafety Research Program under contract No. 20SWAQX04; the Shandong Program of Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao) under contract No. 2022QNLM030003-1.
Supplementary information
Fig. S1. Rarefaction curves of the 15 samples from the Changjiang River Estuary adjacent sea area.
Fig. S2. PCoA of bacterial community compositions based on unweighted UniFrac distance.
Fig. S3. LDA (Linear Discriminant Analysis) value distribution histogram showing bacterial communities with LDA scores greater than 4.
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Qu, C., Wang, X., Zhang, L. et al. Prokaryotic diversity and community composition in the surface sediments of the Changjiang River Estuary in summer. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 42, 113–124 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-023-2153-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-023-2153-2