Functional redundancy enhances microbial resilience in streams: mitigating flow perturbations

作者：Qiaoyan Lin, Yixin Zhang, R.H. Marrs, Naicheng Wu, Raju Sekar, Noël P. D. Juvigny‐Khenafou, Christoph D. Matthaei, Jeremy J. Piggott · 发表于：Frontiers in Microbiology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.3389/fmicb.2025.1581882 · 被引用次数：6 · 研究领域：Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology、Fecal contamination and water quality、Freshwater macroinvertebrate diversity and ecology

Climate-change-induced and anthropogenic flow intermittency and habitat reduction threaten freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Stream ecosystems are increasingly being evaluated for their capacity to endure climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. It remains uncertain how stream ecosystems can withstand multiple disturbances caused by habitat degradation and increasing flow intermittency. We conducted a mesocosm experiment in an ExStream system using benthic biofilm bacteria as a bioindicator to test microbial resilience to drying perturbations, followed by rewetting in streams of different habitats relative to continuous flow. The bacterial communities were compared in three types of habitat heterogeneity and two types of drying perturbation. We investigated how habitat heterogeneity influences bacterial community composition, microbial ecological networks, and ecosystem functioning under drying conditions and recovery after rewetting. The bacterial community composition shifted after drying events and flow resumption. Long-term drying led to decreased bacterial richness but increased bacterial diversity, measured by the Shannon index. Drying networks displayed greater complexity and vulnerability than control networks. These patterns were mitigated by flow resumption, resulting in comparable α-diversity and reduced microbial network complexity and vulnerability compared to the untreated controls. Long-term drying enabled bacterial survival by forming cy...