Environment dependent microbial co‐occurrences across a cyanobacterial bloom in a freshwater lake.

Summary: Microbial taxon–taxon co‐occurrences may directly or indirectly reflect the potential relationships between the members within a microbial community. However, to what extent and the specificity by which these co‐occurrences are influenced by environmental factors remains unclear. In this report, we evaluated how the dynamics of microbial taxon–taxon co‐occurrence is associated with the changes of environmental factors in Nan Lake at Wuhan city, China with a Modified Liquid Association method. We were able to detect more than 1000 taxon–taxon co‐occurrences highly correlated with one or more environmental factors across a phytoplankton bloom using 16S rRNA gene amplicon community profiles. These co‐occurrences, referred to as environment dependent co‐occurrences (ED_co‐occurrences), delineate a unique network in which a taxon–taxon pair exhibits specific, and potentially dynamic correlations with an environmental parameter, while the individual relative abundance of each may not. Microcystis involved ED_co‐occurrences are in important topological positions in the network, suggesting relationships between the bloom dominant species and other taxa could play a role in the interplay of microbial community and environment across various bloom stages. Our results may broaden our understanding of the response of a microbial community to the environment, particularly at the level of microbe–microbe associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]