Seasonal and Environmental Influences on Microbial Community Dynamics in the Dunk River Watershed, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
4 affiliations
- 1Faculty of Computer Science and Institute for Comparative Genomics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
- 2Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Charlottetown Lab, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
- 3Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
- 4Ottawa Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Abstract
Riverine ecosystems are crucial biogeochemical hubs, with their microbial communities playing a key role in nutrient cycling and overall ecosystem health. This study used shotgun metagenomic sequencing to characterize the seasonal and environmental drivers of taxonomic and functional microbial community structure (read depth between 1.91 and 30.44 bp) in four tributaries of the Dunk River watershed in Prince Edward Island (PEI), a landscape shaped by intensive agriculture and groundwater-dominated streamflow, where the seasonal and land-use impacts on the river's microbiome remain understudied. Although taxonomic composition showed no significant spatial variation among sampling sites, functional profiling identified subtle but distinct spatial signatures, primarily driven at the site with the least human impacts. Mass effects driven by above- or below-ground water dispersal pathways may override local selective pressures, resulting in a more uniform community structure across different locations. The study also identified significant correlations between certain rare microbial taxa and nutrient concentrations. This work provides critical baseline data on microbial ecology in PEI river systems, indicating that while temporal factors are the primary identifiable drivers among the measured variables, a substantial majority of the community variance remains unexplained, likely reflecting the inherent stochasticity of open riverine ecosystems.
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BibTeX
@article{murthy2026seasonal,
title = {{Seasonal and Environmental Influences on Microbial Community Dynamics in the Dunk River Watershed, Prince Edward Island, Canada.}},
author = {Sneha Surya Narayana Murthy and Jiacheng Chuan and Yefang Jiang and Wen Chen and Robert G Beiko and Xiang Li},
journal = {Environmental microbiology},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1111/1462-2920.70469},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42971771},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Seasonal and Environmental Influences on Microbial Community Dynamics in the Dunk River Watershed, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
AU - Sneha Surya Narayana Murthy
AU - Jiacheng Chuan
AU - Yefang Jiang
AU - Wen Chen
AU - Robert G Beiko
AU - Xiang Li
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/01
JO - Environmental microbiology
DO - 10.1111/1462-2920.70469
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42971771
AB - Riverine ecosystems are crucial biogeochemical hubs, with their microbial communities playing a key role in nutrient cycling and overall ecosystem health. This study used shotgun metagenomic sequencing to characterize the seasonal and environmental drivers of taxonomic and functional microbial community structure (read depth between 1.91 and 30.44 bp) in four tributaries of the Dunk River watershed in Prince Edward Island (PEI), a landscape shaped by intensive agriculture and groundwater-dominated streamflow, where the seasonal and land-use impacts on the river's microbiome remain understudied. Although taxonomic composition showed no significant spatial variation among sampling sites, functional profiling identified subtle but distinct spatial signatures, primarily driven at the site with the least human impacts. Mass effects driven by above- or below-ground water dispersal pathways may override local selective pressures, resulting in a more uniform community structure across different locations. The study also identified significant correlations between certain rare microbial taxa and nutrient concentrations. This work provides critical baseline data on microbial ecology in PEI river systems, indicating that while temporal factors are the primary identifiable drivers among the measured variables, a substantial majority of the community variance remains unexplained, likely reflecting the inherent stochasticity of open riverine ecosystems.
SN - 1462-2912
SN - 1462-2920
ER -