Community stability increases the predictability of microeukaryote community coalescence outcomes

Abstract

Mixing of entire microbial communities represents a frequent, yet understudied phenomenon. Here, we mimicked estuarine condition in a microcosm experiment by mixing a freshwater river community with a brackish sea community and assessed the effects of both environmental and community coalescences induced by varying mixing processes on microeukaryotic communities. Signs of shifted community composition of coalesced communities towards the sea parent community suggest asymmetrical community coalescence outcome, which, in addition, was generally less impacted by environmental coalescence. Diatoms were negatively impacted by coalescence, while fungi, ciliates, and cercozoans were promoted to varying extents, depending on the mixing ratios of the source (i.e., river or sea) communities. Community stability, inferred from community cohesion, suggests that the more stable parent community (i.e., community with greater negative cohesion attributed to competitive interactions) dominates the final, coalesced community, but the fate of its community members is influenced by mixing ratios and frequencies (i.e., one-time versus repeated coalescence). Generally, community coalescence increased alpha diversity and promoted competition from the introduction (or emergence) of additional (or rare) species. These competitive interactions in turn had community stabilizing effect as evidenced by the increased proportion of negative cohesion. Our study suggests that the predictability of coalescence outcomes was greater when the more stable parent community (i.e., sea microbes) dominated the final community and this predictability was further enhanced when communities collided repeatedly. Open research statementSequencing data is deposited to NCBI SRA database under the accession number PRJNA922225. Data (OTU table, consensus taxonomy and metadata) are available in Open Science Framework (OSF) (http://osf.io/sme36).