From the Sunlit to the Aphotic Zone: Assembly Mechanisms and Co-Occurrence Patterns of Protistan-Bacterial Microbiotas in the Western Pacific Ocean
Ping Sun, Ying Wang, Yifan Zhang, Ramiro Logares, Peng Cheng, Dapeng Xu, Bangqin Huang
Abstract
We know little about the assembly processes and association patterns of microbial communities below the photic zone in marine pelagic systems. We discovered that community assembly processes differed between photic and aphotic zones, with all three microbial groups studied (protists and FL and PA bacteria) being more influenced by stochastic processes than in the photic zone. The decrease in organismic associations and the increase in dispersal limitation from the photic to the aphotic zone both have an impact on the deterministic-stochastic balance, resulting in a more stochastic process-driven community assembly for all three microbial groups in the aphotic zone. Our findings significantly contribute to the understanding of how and why microbial assembly and co-occurrence change between photic and aphotic zones, offering insight into the dynamics of the protist-bacteria microbiota in the western Pacific oceans.