pH influences the importance of niche-related and neutral processes in lacustrine bacterioplankton assembly

pH is an important factor that shapes the structure of bacterial communities. However, we have very limited information about the patterns and processes by which overall bacterioplankton communities assemble across wide pH gradients in natural freshwater lakes. Here, we used pyrosequencing to analyze the bacterioplankton communities in 25 discrete freshwater lakes in Denmark with pH levels ranging from 3.8 to 8.8. We found that pH was the key factor impacting lacustrine bacterioplankton community assembly. More acidic lakes imposed stronger environmental filtering, which decreased the richness and evenness of bacterioplankton operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and largely shifted community composition. Although environmental filtering was determined to be the most important determinant of bacterioplankton community assembly, the importance of neutral assembly processes must also be considered, notably in acidic lakes, where the species (OTU) diversity was low. We observed that the strong effect of environmental filtering in more acidic lakes was weakened by the enhanced relative importance of neutral community assembly, and bacterioplankton communities tended to be less phylogenetically clustered in more acidic lakes. In summary, we propose that pH is a major environmental determinant in freshwater lakes, regulating the relative importance and interplay between niche-related and neutral processes and shaping the patterns of freshwater lake bacterioplankton biodiversity.