Ecogenomics of Zooplankton Community Reveals Ecological Threshold of Ammonia Nitrogen

Abstract

Communities of zooplankton can be adversely affected by contamination resulting from human activities. Yet understanding the influence of water quality on zooplankton under field-conditions is hindered by traditional labor-intensive approaches that are prone to incomplete or uncertain taxonomic determinations. Here, for the first time, an eco-genomic approach, based on genetic diversity in the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) region of DNA of zooplankton was used to develop a site-specific, water quality criterion (WQC) for ammonia (NH). Ammonia has been recognized as a primary stressor in the catchment of the large, eutrophic Tai Lake, China. Nutrients, especially NH and nitrite (NO) had more significant effects on structure of the zooplankton community than did other environmental factors. Abundances of rotifers increased along a gradient of increasing concentrations of total ammonia nitrogen (TAN), while abundances of copepods and cladocera decreased. A novel, rapid, species sensitivity distribution (SSD) approach based on operational taxonomic units (OTUs) was established to develop a WQC for NH. The WQC based on OTUs was consistent with the WQC based on the traditional morphology taxonomy approach. This genetics-based SSD approach could be a useful tool for monitoring for status and trends in species composition and deriving ecological criteria and an efficient biomonitoring tool to protect local aquatic ecosystems in virtually any aquatic ecosystem.

Geographical distribution of zooplankton biodiversity in highly polluted running water ecosystems: Validation of fine‐scale species sorting hypothesis

“…Ammonium is actually composed of unionized (NH 3 ‐N) and ionized (NH 4 ‐N) ammonium, two types which show mutual transformation due to changes of pH and temperature. The form of NH 4 ‐N is biologically safe, while NH 3 ‐N can pass through the biological surface of organisms and permeate into their bodies, resulting in ammonium intoxication (Cheng et al., ; Yang et al., ). However, different species have different tolerance to ammonium.…”

Using extirpation to evaluate ionic tolerance of freshwater fish

“…This suggests that it would also be advantageous to identify invertebrates to species [58]. Most importantly, it makes assessing each group possible and does not limit the assessment to the least distinct level of taxonomic identification (i.e., combining fish and invertebrates at the genus level, which we have shown can be biased toward the more tolerant species in a genus).…”

Testing clustering strategies for metabarcoding‐based investigation of community–environment interactions

“…As biological communities such as zooplankton play an essential role in aquatic food webs and exhibit strong and rapid responses to environmental pollution (Costa, Pinheiro, Amado, & de Oliveira Lima, 2016;Yang et al, 2017), they are usually used to infer environmental conditions and ecosystem functioning in polluted aquatic ecosystems (Fermani et al, 2013;Palmer & Yan, 2013;Xiong, Li, Chen, et al, 2016;Xiong, Ni, Chen, et al, 2017). Great efforts on morphological identification have been made to investigate biodiversity of microscopic zooplankton, and such efforts have provided a critical impetus for zooplankton ecology research, unmasking the crucial ecological roles of zooplankton in aquatic ecosystems (e.g., Bertani, Ferrari, & Rossetti, 2012;Lair, 2006;Xiong, Li, Chen, et al, 2016;Xiong, Ni, Chen, et al, 2017).…”