Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Ecosystem Ecology
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1416359
This article is part of the Research Topic Marine Plankton: Biological and Chemical Interactions View all 3 articles

Seasonal changes of plankton community and its influencing factors in subtropical coastal marine areas revealed by eDNA-based network analysis

Provisionally accepted

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Coastal marine ecosystems are among the most ecologically and socio-economically dynamic regions on Earth, and the study of eukaryotic planktonic communities is an important aspect of aquatic ecology. It is essential to monitor plankton biodiversity and identify influencing factors in order to measure human effects on coastal waters and help contribute to ecosystem preservation.Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding analysis is an advanced toolfor detecting the presence of aquatic organisms, which has revolutionary significance for biodiversity monitoring and realtime detection of wild environments. In this study, eDNA metabarcoding was used to study seasonal changes in eukaryotic plankton communities in subtropical coastal waters of the northern South China Sea, to explore how various trophic groups affect the complexity and stability of the species network. The results showed that the summer interaction network is looser and had has reduce biodiversitycompared to the spring interaction network. As an important part of the planktonic community, the abundance and diversity of algae reflect the interactions between different species and the influence of environmental factors on the dominant species, particularly temperature and nutrients. In addition, producer diversity set the basis for species network complexity and indirectly affected network stability, while consumer diversity and its flexible predation strategies may directly lead to differences in network stability across seasons. There were close correlations among species interaction, environmental factors and species diversity. This study can help us understand the ecosystem functions throughout the year and the complex interactions of planktonic communities from a multiple trophic level perspective, and provide effective methods for sustainable resource utilization and ecological environmental protection in the future.

    Keywords: Plankton community, subtropical marine ecology, Co-occurrence network, environmental DNA, Multiple trophic levels, seasonal changes

    Received: 12 Apr 2024; Accepted: 07 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lin, Li, Zhao, Gao, Zhang, Wang, Wang, Sanganyado, Gutang, Liu, Li, Yan, Chen, Lin and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Jianqing Lin, Shantou University, Shantou, China
    Wenhua Liu, Shantou University, Shantou, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.