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Bacterial community succession in response to dissolved organic matter released from live jellyfish

  • Ecology
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Abstract

Jellyfish blooms have increased worldwide, and the outbreaks of jellyfish population not only affect the food web structures via voracious predation but also play an important role in the dynamics of nutrients and oxygen in planktonic food webs. However, it remains unclear whether specific carbon compounds released through jellyfish metabolic processes have the potential to shape bacterial community composition. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to investigate the compositional succession of the bacterioplankton community in response to the dissolved organic matter (DOM) released by the live Scyphomedusae Cyanea lamarckii and Chrysaora hysoscella collected from Helgoland Roads of the North Sea. The bacterial community was significantly stimulated by the DOM released form live jellyfish and different dominant phylotypes were observed for these two Scyphomedusae species. Furthermore, the bacterial community structures in the different DOM sources, jellyfish-incubated media, Kabeltonne seawater, and artificial seawater (DOM-free) were significantly different, as revealed by automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis fingerprints. Catalyzed reporter deposition fluorescence in situ hybridization (CARD-FISH) revealed a rapid species-specific shift in bacterial community composition. Gammaproteobacteria dominated the community instead of the Bacteroidetes community for C. lamarckii, whereas Gammaproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes dominated the community for C. hysoscella. The significant differences in the bacterial community composition and succession indicate that the components of the DOM released by jellyfish might differ with jellyfish species.

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Acknowledgement

This study was part of a Ph.D. thesis within the Food Web Project at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (Germany), and we are grateful for the funding from the China Scholarship Council. Many thanks to Jutta Niggemann and Thorsten Dittmar (ICBM COU Oldenburg) who supported the preparation of the DOM free seawater strongly with material and technical support. Furthermore, we thank the crew of the AADE research vessel for providing samples as well as the entire team of the AWI Food Web Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Science, Nantong University, Nantong, 226019, China

    Wenjin Hao

  2. Department of Marine Ecology, College of Marine Life Sciences, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266000, China

    Wenjin Hao & Xuexi Tang

  3. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Biologische Anstalt Helgoland, Helgoland, 27498, Germany

    Antje Wichels & Gunnar Gerdts

  4. Department Molecular Ecology, Max-Planck-Institute for Marine Microbiology, Celsiusstr. 1, Bremen, 28359, Germany

    Bernhardt Fuchs

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  1. Wenjin Hao
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  2. Antje Wichels
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  4. Xuexi Tang
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  5. Gunnar Gerdts
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Correspondence to Wenjin Hao.

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Hao, W., Wichels, A., Fuchs, B. et al. Bacterial community succession in response to dissolved organic matter released from live jellyfish. J. Ocean. Limnol. 37, 1229–1244 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-019-8106-0

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