The temporal scaling of bacterioplankton composition: high turnover and predictability during shrimp cultivation

The spatial distribution of microbial communities has recently been reliably documented in the form of a distance-similarity decay relationship. In contrast, temporal scaling, the pattern defined by the microbial similarity-time relationships (STRs), has received far less attention. As a result, it is unclear whether the spatial and temporal variations of microbial communities share a similar power law. In this study, we applied the 454 pyrosequencing technique to investigate temporal scaling in patterns of bacterioplankton community dynamics during the process of shrimp culture. Our results showed that the similarities decreased significantly (P = 0.002) with time during the period over which the bacterioplankton community was monitored, with a scaling exponent of w = 0.400. However, the diversities did not change dramatically. The community dynamics followed a gradual process of succession relative to the parent communities, with greater similarities between samples from consecutive sampling points. In particular, the variations of the bacterial communities from different ponds shared similar successional trajectories, suggesting that bacterial temporal dynamics are predictable to a certain extent. Changes in bacterial community structure were significantly correlated with the combination of Chl a, TN, PO4 (3-), and the C/N ratio. In this study, we identified predictable patterns in the temporal dynamics of bacterioplankton community structure, demonstrating that the STR of the bacterial community mirrors the spatial distance-similarity decay model.