Seasonal variations of microbial community structure, assembly processes, and influencing factors in karst river

The physicochemical properties and microbial communities have significant annual and seasonal changes in karst aquifers. To explore the changes of microbial community and their relationships with environmental factors, water samples were collected from a typical karst river. Microbial communities in winter (Jan-2017 and Jan-2019) were stable with high similarity in spite of the 2 years sampling interval, but the microbial communities in Aug-2017 was different from that in Aug-2018. In four sampling times, there were 275 shared genera, whose average relative abundance ranging from 89.04 to 96.27%. The winter and summer specific genera were mainly from the recharge of tributary site K6 and discharge of waste water treatment plant (K2 and K3), respectively. The deterministic processes had a more significant effect on the microbial community assembly in winter than that in summer, which was affected by environmental pressure from pollution. Furthermore, antibiotics and inorganic nitrogen pollution affected element cycles of nitrogen and sulfur indirectly through microbial ecological modules in karst river, and the denitrification and desulfurization processes were potentially inhibited. These findings contributed to understand the changes and its assembly mechanism of microbial community, as well as the feedback to environment in polluted karst river.

Automated summary

The physicochemical properties and microbial communities in karst aquifers undergo significant annual and seasonal changes. Water samples were collected from a typical karst river to investigate the changes in microbial communities and their relationships with environmental factors. The microbial communities were stable during winter but varied between different years in summer. The assembly of microbial communities in winter was more influenced by deterministic processes, likely due to environmental pollution.