Eukaryotic plankton community and assembly processes in a large-scale water diversion project in China

The Middle Route of the South to North Water Diversion Project (MRP) and its water source, the Danjiangkou Reservoir (DJK), play a pivotal role in mitigating the chronic water scarcity challenges faced by northern China. Eukaryotic plankton are widespread in aquatic ecosystems, which are crucial for the water quality stability of DJK and MRP, yet comparative studies on their contemporaneous dynamics and assembly processes are scarce. In this study, amplicon sequencing was used to investigate the eukaryotic plankton communities. The results revealed that the similarity in community composition of DJK is significantly higher than that of MRP, exhibiting distance-decay patterns. Environmental heterogeneity exhibits significant differences between DJK and MRP, and it significantly influences community composition and alpha diversity. Additionally, the assembly processes of eukaryotic plankton in both DJK and MRP are predominantly influenced by stochastic processes. However, in comparison to DJK, deterministic processes have a more pronounced impact on MRP, accounting for 39.29% and 1.82%, respectively. The variations in total nitrogen (TN), chlorophy IIa (Chl.a), and conductivity (Spc) have led to a transition in the assembly of eukaryotic phytoplankton communities in MRP from a stochastic process to a deterministic process. This study extends insights into the dynamics and assembly processes of eukaryotic plankton communities in the large, engineered drinking water diversion project and its water source, which is also useful for the management and regulation of the DJK and MRP.