Assembly processes of eukaryotic plankton communities in the world's largest drinking water diversion project

The largest engineered water diversion project-the Middle Route of the South to North Water Diversion Project (MRP), is of strategic importance in solving the problem of the northern water shortage in China. Eukaryotic plankton are important to the water quality stability in the MRP, but little has been reported about their dynamics and assembly processes, especially for abundant and rare communities. In this study, amplicon sequencing was used to investigate the eukaryotic plankton communities. The results revealed both abundant and rare communities exhibited similar distance-decay patterns, but abundant communities were particularly subject to environmental heterogeneity and played an important role in determining seasonal differences in eukaryotic plankton communities and alpha diversity. In the MRP, with its strong hydrodynamic exchange, abundant and rare communities were mainly affected by stochastic processes, especially homogenizing dispersal. In addition, abundant communities were subject to moderate variable selection (25 %) and rare communities were affected by a higher proportion of dispersal limitation (27 % vs. 10 %). The variation in water temperature and water velocity led to a shift from a stochastic to a deterministic process dominating the assembly of abundant communities. This study extends insights into the dynamics and assembly processes of abundant and rare eukaryotic plankton communities in the large, engineered drinking water diversion project, which is also useful for the management and regulation of the MRP.