Contrasting patterns of carbon cycling and dissolved organic matter processing in two phytoplankton-bacteria communities

Abstract

Microbial consumption of phytoplankton-derived organic carbon in the pelagic food web is an important component of the global C cycle. We studied C cycling in two phytoplankton-bacteria systems (non-axenic cultures of a dinoflagellate Apocalathium malmogiense and a cryptophyte Rhodomonas marina) in two complementary experiments. In the first experiment we grew phytoplankton and bacteria in nutrient-replete conditions and followed C processing at early exponential growth phase and twice later when the community had grown denser. Cell-specific primary production and total community respiration were up to 4 and 7 times higher, respectively, in the A. malmogiense treatments. Based on the optical signals, accumulating dissolved organic C (DOC) was degraded more in the R. marina treatments, and the rate of bacterial production to primary production was higher. Thus, the flow of C from phytoplankton to bacteria was relatively higher in R. marina treatments than in A. malmogiense treatments, which was further supported by faster C-14 transfer from phytoplankton to bacterial biomass. In the second experiment we investigated consumption of the phytoplankton-derived DOC by bacteria. DOC consumption and transformation, bacterial production, and bacterial respiration were all higher in R. marina treatments. In both experiments A. malmogiense supported a bacterial community predominated by bacteria specialized in the utilization of less labile DOC (class Bacteroidia), whereas R. marina supported a community predominated by copiotrophic Alphaand Gammaproteobacteria. Our findings suggest that large dinoflagellates cycle relatively more C between phytoplankton biomass and the inorganic C pool, whereas small cryptophytes direct relatively more C to the microbial loop.