Temporal and Spatial Characterization of Sediment Bacterial Communities from Lake Wetlands in a Plain River Network Region

Sediment bacterial communities are a vital component of microbial communities in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and they play a critical role in lake wetlands. We aimed to investigate the effect of season, depth and regional environmental factors on the composition and diversity of bacterial communities in a plain river network area from Taihu Basin. The millions of Illumina reads (16S rRNA gene amplicons) at the surface 25 cm inside samples of the study area were examined using a technically consistent approach. Results from the diversity index, relative abundance, principal component analysis (PCA), redundancy analysis (RDA) and linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis indicated that the diversity of the bacterial community in summer was generally higher than in other seasons. Proteobacteria were the most abundant phylum in the sediment samples in different seasons (43.15–57.41%) and different layers (39.66–77.97%); the autumn sediments were enriched with Firmicutes (5.67%) and Chloroflexi (12.5%); in all four seasons the sediments were enriched with Betaproteobacteria (14.98–23.45%), Gammaproteobacteria (11.98–14.36%) and Deltaproteobacteria (8.68–14.45%). In the bottom sediments (10–25 cm), Chloroflexi were abundant (average value 10.42%), while Bacteroidetes was the dominant phylum in the surface sediments; redundancy analysis found that total phosphorus (TP) (p = 0.036) was the main environmental factor influencing the sediment bacterial community in different layers. This study provides a reference for further understanding the effects of seasonal changes on sediment microorganisms in lake wetlands.