Giongo A, dos Anjos Borges LG, Simão TLL, Eizirik E, Utz LPP (2023) Structure and Dynamics of Periphyton in a Neotropical Freshwater Lake, with Emphasis on Ciliates and Their Relationships with Bacterial Taxa. Microbial Ecology 86:187–199.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-022-02101-w

Unassembled raw amplicon data were deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under BioProject PRJNA736224

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00248-022-02101-w#data-availability

Periphyton communities in freshwater systems play an essential role in biogeochemical processes, but knowledge of their structure and dynamics lags far behind other environments. We used eDNA metabarcoding of 16S and 18S rRNA markers to investigate the formation and establishment of a periphytic community, in addition to a morphology-based approach for peritrich ciliate determinations, its most abundant group. We sampled two nearby sites within a large Neotropical lake at four time points, aiming to assess whether periphyton establishment can be replicated on this local scale. Producers and denitrifiers were abundant in the community, illustrating the relevant role of biofilms in freshwater nutrient recycling. Among microeukaryotes, peritrich ciliates dominated the community, with genera Epistylis and Vorticella being the most abundant and showing a clear succession at both sites. Other ciliates were morphologically identified and, in some cases, their occurrence was strongly related to bacterial abundance. The structure of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic components of periphyton was not different, while the turnover dynamics differed between the two sites, in spite of their adjacent locations and similar abiotic properties. This indicates that the establishment of these communities can vary even on a local scale within a lake ecosystem.

This work was supported by a CNPq fellowship granted to LRPU. This study was also financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001.

Research Group Aquatic Biology PUCRS

Submitted to Microbial Ecology on 02.12.2022.
Accepted on 05.02.2023.