Regional environmental heterogeneity under contrasting anthropogenic pressures has differential effects on particle-attached than free-living bacteria communities in coral reef waters

作者：He D, Wang H, Ren L, Luo H, Duan J, Chen Z, Wu QL · 发表于：Microbiology spectrum · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1128/spectrum.03078-25 · 被引用次数：74 · 研究领域：Coral Reefs、Bacteria、Seawater、Anthropogenic Effects、Microbiota、China、Ecosystem、Animals、Carbon、Biodiversity、Ammonia

UNLABELLED: Coral reef ecosystems are facing increasing environmental and anthropogenic pressures worldwide. Their health and prosperity depend, at least partly, on the surrounding water environment, where the free-living (FL) and particle-attached (PA) bacterial communities play essential yet distinct ecological roles. However, these communities' distributions and variations across coral reef ecosystems with large environmental and anthropogenic gradients remain scarcely understood. In this study, we investigated FL and PA communities in coral reef waters from three regions of the South China Sea (SCS): Hainan, ZhongXisha, and Nansha. Among the various factors influencing bacterial communities, the region exhibited the greatest impact when compared to lifestyle (PA versus FL) and layer (surface versus bottom water). The Hainan waters exhibited higher contents of total organic carbon (TOC) and ammonia yet lower temperature, which likely contributes to the higher alpha diversity and the increase of Alphaproteobacteria and Bacteroidetes. While stochastic processes showed dominance for communities' assembly, the relative importance of homogeneous selection increased particularly for the Hainan PA community. Network analyses showed that the Hainan PA community network was more complex and densely connected than other community networks. The anthropogenic (TOC and ammonia as proxies) and environmental contexts in the region of Hainan may elevate the robustness of the PA network bu...