Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes

Abstract The metacommunity approach provides insights into how the biological communities are assembled along the environmental variations. The current study presents the importance of water quality on the metacommunity structure of algal communities in six river-connected lakes using long-term (8 y...

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Main Authors: Min Sung Kim, Seok Hyun Ahn, In Jae Jeong, Tae Kwon Lee
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2021-06-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93178-9
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spelling doaj-b97a41692cee429db97a3adb7077ede42021-07-04T11:26:50ZengNature Publishing GroupScientific Reports2045-23222021-06-011111910.1038/s41598-021-93178-9Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakesMin Sung Kim0Seok Hyun Ahn1In Jae Jeong2Tae Kwon Lee3Department of Environmental Engineering, Yonsei UniversityDepartment of Environmental Engineering, Yonsei UniversityDepartment of Environmental Engineering, Yonsei UniversityDepartment of Environmental Engineering, Yonsei UniversityAbstract The metacommunity approach provides insights into how the biological communities are assembled along the environmental variations. The current study presents the importance of water quality on the metacommunity structure of algal communities in six river-connected lakes using long-term (8 years) monitoring datasets. Elements of metacommunity structure were analyzed to evaluate whether water quality structured the metacommunity across biogeographic regions in the riverine ecosystem. The algal community in all lakes was found to exhibit Clementsian or quasi-Clementsian structure properties such as significant turnover, grouped and species sorting indicating that the communities responded to the environmental gradient. Reciprocal averaging clearly classified the lakes into three clusters according to the geographical region in river flow (upstream, midstream, and downstream). The dispersal patterns of algal genera, including Aulacoseira, Cyclotella, Stephanodiscus, and Chlamydomonas across the regions also supported the spatial-based classification results. Although conductivity, chemical oxygen demand, and biological oxygen demand were found to be important variables (loading > |0.5|) of the entire algal community assembly, water temperature was a critical factor in water quality associated with community assembly in each geographical area. These results support the notion that the structure of algal communities is strongly associated with water quality, but the relative importance of variables in structuring algal communities differed by geological regions.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93178-9
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Min Sung Kim
Seok Hyun Ahn
In Jae Jeong
Tae Kwon Lee
spellingShingle Min Sung Kim
Seok Hyun Ahn
In Jae Jeong
Tae Kwon Lee
Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes
Scientific Reports
author_facet Min Sung Kim
Seok Hyun Ahn
In Jae Jeong
Tae Kwon Lee
author_sort Min Sung Kim
title Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes
title_short Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes
title_full Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes
title_fullStr Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes
title_full_unstemmed Water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes
title_sort water quality drives the regional patterns of an algal metacommunity in interconnected lakes
publisher Nature Publishing Group
series Scientific Reports
issn 2045-2322
publishDate 2021-06-01
description Abstract The metacommunity approach provides insights into how the biological communities are assembled along the environmental variations. The current study presents the importance of water quality on the metacommunity structure of algal communities in six river-connected lakes using long-term (8 years) monitoring datasets. Elements of metacommunity structure were analyzed to evaluate whether water quality structured the metacommunity across biogeographic regions in the riverine ecosystem. The algal community in all lakes was found to exhibit Clementsian or quasi-Clementsian structure properties such as significant turnover, grouped and species sorting indicating that the communities responded to the environmental gradient. Reciprocal averaging clearly classified the lakes into three clusters according to the geographical region in river flow (upstream, midstream, and downstream). The dispersal patterns of algal genera, including Aulacoseira, Cyclotella, Stephanodiscus, and Chlamydomonas across the regions also supported the spatial-based classification results. Although conductivity, chemical oxygen demand, and biological oxygen demand were found to be important variables (loading > |0.5|) of the entire algal community assembly, water temperature was a critical factor in water quality associated with community assembly in each geographical area. These results support the notion that the structure of algal communities is strongly associated with water quality, but the relative importance of variables in structuring algal communities differed by geological regions.
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93178-9
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