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Seasonal and Episodic Lake Mixing Stimulate Differential Planktonic Bacterial Dynamics

  • Microbiology of Aquatic Systems
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Abstract

Yuan Yang Lake (YYL), Taiwan, experiences both winter and typhoon-initiated mixing, and each type of mixing event is characterized by contrasting environmental conditions. Previous work suggested that after typhoon mixing, bacterial communities in YYL reset to a pioneer composition and then follow a predictable trajectory of change until the next typhoon. Our goal was to continue this investigation by observing bacterial community change after a range of mixing intensities, including seasonal winter mixing. We fingerprinted aquatic bacterial communities in the epilimnion and hypolimnion using automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis and then assessed community response using multivariate statistics. We found a significant linear relationship between water column stability and the epilimnion to hypolimnion divergences. In comparison to the summer, we found the winter community had a distinct composition and less variation. We divided the bacterial community into population subsets according to abundance (rare, common, or dominant) and occurrence (transient or persistent) and further explored the contribution of these subsets to the overall community patterns. We found that transient taxa did not drive bacterial community patterns following weak typhoon mixing events, but contributed substantially to patterns observed following strong events. Common taxa generally did not follow the community trajectory after weak or strong events. Our results suggest intensity, frequency, and seasonality jointly contribute to aquatic bacterial response to mixing disturbance.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Global Lakes Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) for instrumented buoy support and travel funds for winter 2007. Summer 2006 travel was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes 2006 award to AS. NSF Microbial Observatory NSF MCB-0702395 to KDM and a grant from the National Science Council of Taiwan NSC 96-2621-B-001 to CYC supported laboratory analyses and field logistics. We thank Y Chou and W-H Wu for field assistance, A Sanders and J Tracey for technical assistance, L Beversdorf, YS Dufour, SE Jones, TK Kratz, and RJ Newton for helpful discussions and constructive criticism, and JS Read for helpful discussions and for sharing bathymetry observations. We also acknowledge support from the NSF-funded North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research Site (NTL-LTER; DEB-0217533 and DEB-0822700).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microbiology Doctoral Training Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Microbial Sciences Building, 1550 Linden Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Ashley Shade

  2. Research Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, 11529

    Chih-Yu Chiu

  3. Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 3204 Engineering Hall, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI, 53706-1691, USA

    Katherine D. McMahon

  4. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 3204 Engineering Hall, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI, 53706-1691, USA

    Katherine D. McMahon

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  1. Ashley Shade
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  2. Chih-Yu Chiu
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  3. Katherine D. McMahon
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Correspondence to Ashley Shade.

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Shade, A., Chiu, CY. & McMahon, K.D. Seasonal and Episodic Lake Mixing Stimulate Differential Planktonic Bacterial Dynamics. Microb Ecol 59, 546–554 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-009-9589-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-009-9589-6

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