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Changes in bacterial community metabolism and composition during the degradation of dissolved organic matter from the jellyfish Aurelia aurita in a Mediterranean coastal lagoon

  • Microbial Ecology of the Continental and Coastal Environments
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Abstract

Spatial increases and temporal shifts in outbreaks of gelatinous plankton have been observed over the past several decades in many estuarine and coastal ecosystems. The effects of these blooms on marine ecosystem functioning and particularly on the dynamics of the heterotrophic bacteria are still unclear. The response of the bacterial community from a Mediterranean coastal lagoon to the addition of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from the jellyfish Aurelia aurita, corresponding to an enrichment of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) by 1.4, was assessed for 22 days in microcosms (8 l). The high bioavailability of this material led to (i) a rapid mineralization of the DOC and dissolved organic nitrogen from the jellyfish and (ii) the accumulation of high concentrations of ammonium and orthophosphate in the water column. DOM from jellyfish greatly stimulated heterotrophic prokaryotic production and respiration rates during the first 2 days; then, these activities showed a continuous decay until reaching those measured in the control microcosms (lagoon water only) at the end of the experiment. Bacterial growth efficiency remained below 20 %, indicating that most of the DOM was respired and a minor part was channeled to biomass production. Changes in bacterial diversity were assessed by tag pyrosequencing of partial bacterial 16S rRNA genes, DNA fingerprints, and a cultivation approach. While bacterial diversity in control microcosms showed little changes during the experiment, the addition of DOM from the jellyfish induced a rapid growth of Pseudoalteromonas and Vibrio species that were isolated. After 9 days, the bacterial community was dominated by Bacteroidetes, which appeared more adapted to metabolize high-molecular-weight DOM. At the end of the experiment, the bacterial community shifted toward a higher proportion of Alphaproteobacteria. Resilience of the bacterial community after the addition of DOM from the jellyfish was higher for metabolic functions than diversity, suggesting that jellyfish blooms can induce durable changes in the bacterial community structure in coastal lagoons.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the CNRS-EC2CO program through the GELPROC project (2010–2012): “Interactions between gelatinous plankton and dynamics of prokaryotic communities.” We wish to thank P. Roman for the jellyfish maintenance. We are grateful to the BIO2MAR platform (http://bio2mar.obs-banyuls.fr) for providing technical support and access to instrumentation. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments that greatly improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7621, Laboratoire d’Océanographie Microbienne, Observatoire Océanologique, 66650, Banyuls/mer, France

    Marine Blanchet, Philippe Catala, Louise Oriol, Jocelyne Caparros, Eva Ortega-Retuerta & Fabien Joux

  2. CNRS, UMR 7621, Laboratoire d’Océanographie Microbienne, Observatoire Océanologique, 66650, Banyuls/mer, France

    Marine Blanchet, Philippe Catala, Louise Oriol, Jocelyne Caparros, Eva Ortega-Retuerta & Fabien Joux

  3. UMR5119 Ecologie des systèmes marins côtiers (ECOSYM), CNRS, IRD, UM2, UM1, Université Montpellier 2, Case 093, 34095, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Olivier Pringault, Marc Bouvy, Martin Agis & Patrice Got

  4. Institut de Ciències del Mar, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

    Eva Ortega-Retuerta

  5. Sorbonne Universités UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMS 2348, Observatoire Océanologique, 66650, Banyuls/Mer, France

    Laurent Intertaglia & Nyree West

  6. CNRS, UMS 2348, Observatoire Océanologique, 66650, Banyuls/Mer, France

    Laurent Intertaglia & Nyree West

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  1. Marine Blanchet
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  2. Olivier Pringault
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Correspondence to Fabien Joux.

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Blanchet, M., Pringault, O., Bouvy, M. et al. Changes in bacterial community metabolism and composition during the degradation of dissolved organic matter from the jellyfish Aurelia aurita in a Mediterranean coastal lagoon. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 13638–13653 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3848-x

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