Bacterioplankton Community Composition in Five Lakes Differing in Trophic Status and Humic Content

Abstract To investigate the relation between lake type and bacterioplankton community composition, five Swedish lakes, which differed from each other in nutrient content and water color, were studied. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of 16S rDNA was used to examine community composition. The DGGE-patterns of the different samples were analyzed in relation to physical, chemical, and biological data from the lakes by canonical correspondence analysis (CCA). The three variables found to most strongly correlate with the DGGE patterns were biomasses of microzooplankton, cryptophytes, and chrysophytes, suggesting that these biota had an impact on bacterioplankton community structure. Two of the three factors were, in turn, significantly correlated to parameters associated with the trophic status of the lakes, indicating that the nutrient content of the lakes, at least indirectly, influenced the structure of the bacterioplankton community. The relation to water color was less pronounced. Received: 16 February 2000; Accepted: 27 April 2000; Online Publication: 18 July 2000