Temporal and spatial dynamics in microbial community composition within a temperate stream network

The water column of streams hosts a unique microbial community that is distinct from the microbial communities of the stream benthos and surrounding soil. This community is shaped by complex interacting forces, including microbial dispersal from surrounding environments and in-stream selection. However, how the processes structuring stream communities change over space and time remains poorly understood. In this study, we characterize spatial and temporal trends in microbial community composition throughout a stream network spanning first through fifth order streams. We found that the microbial communities of headwater streams are compositionally diverse, with low representation of freshwater microbial taxa and high representation of soil and sediment-associated taxa. In three out of five seasonal samplings, a successional pattern was identified in which phylotype richness and compositional heterogeneity decreased while the proportion of known freshwater taxa increased with increasing cumulative upstream dendritic distance. However, in two samplings, streams instead exhibited uniformly high microbial diversity across the watershed, and the fraction of freshwater taxa showed no relationship with dendritic distance. Overall, our data suggest that the successional processes that drive microbial diversity in streams are highly dynamic and can be disrupted at landscape scales, potentially in response to variation in temperature and precipitation.