Temporal Beta Diversity of Bacteria in Streams: Network Position Matters But Differently for Bacterioplankton and Biofilm Communities

TL;DR

Bacterial communities in streams change over time, with different patterns in open water and biofilm habitats linked to stream location and environmental factors.

Contribution

This study reveals distinct temporal β-diversity patterns in bacterioplankton and biofilm communities related to stream network position and environmental variability.

Findings

Temporal β-diversity decreased from headwaters to mainstems for bacterioplankton but increased for biofilm.

Bacterioplankton diversity was linked to water chemistry variability, while biofilm diversity was linked to temperature variability.

Soil communities showed no relation to stream network position but were influenced by soil environment variability.

Abstract

Concern about biodiversity loss has yielded a surge of studies on temporal change in α-diversity, whereas temporal β-diversity has gained less interest. We sampled bacterioplankton, biofilm, and riparian soil bacteria repeatedly across the open-water season in a pristine stream network to determine the level of temporal β-diversity in relation to stream network position and environmental variability. We tested the hypothesis that aquatic bacterial communities in isolated and environmentally heterogenous headwaters exhibit high temporal β-diversity while the better-connected and environmentally more stable mainstem sections support more stable communities, and soil communities bear no relationship to network position. As expected, temporal β-diversity decreased from headwaters toward mainstems for bacterioplankton. Against expectations, an opposite pattern was observed for biofilm. For bacterioplankton, temporal β-diversity was positively related to temporal variability in water chemistry. For biofilm bacteria, temporal variability was negatively related to variability in temperature. Temporal β-diversity of soil communities did not show any response to stream network position, but was strongly related to variability in the soil environment. The two aquatic habitats and riparian soils supported distinctly different bacterial communities. The number of ASVs shared between the soil and the aquatic communities decreased along the network, and more so for bacterioplankton. The higher temporal variability of bacterial communities in the headwaters likely results from temporally variable input of propagules from riparian soil, emphasizing the role of land–water connection and network position to bacterioplankton community composition. Overall, bacterial communities exhibited high temporal variability, highlighting the importance of temporal replication to fully capture their network-scale biodiversity.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00248-025-02522-3.

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