Acidification and warming affect prominent bacteria in two seasonal phytoplankton bloom mesocosms.

In contrast to clear stimulatory effects of rising temperature, recent studies of the effects of CO ₂ on planktonic bacteria have reported conflicting results. To better understand the potential impact of predicted climate scenarios on the development and performance of bacterial communities, we performed bifactorial mesocosm experiments (pCO ₂ and temperature) with Baltic Sea water, during a diatom dominated bloom in autumn and a mixed phytoplankton bloom in summer. The development of bacterial community composition (BCC) followed well-known algal bloom dynamics. A principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) of bacterial OTUs (operational taxonomic units) revealed that phytoplankton succession and temperature were the major variables structuring the bacterial community whereas the impact of pCO ₂ was weak. Prokaryotic abundance and carbon production, and organic matter concentration and composition were partly affected by temperature but not by increased pCO ₂ . However, pCO ₂ did have significant and potentially direct effects on the relative abundance of several dominant OTUs; in some cases, these effects were accompanied by an antagonistic impact of temperature. Our results suggest the necessity of high-resolution BCC analyses and statistical analyses at the OTU level to detect the strong impact of CO ₂ on specific bacterial groups, which in turn might also influence specific organic matter degradation processes.
(© 2016 Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)