Impacts of different salinities on bacterial biofilm communities in fresh water

Natural and anthropogenic salinization continuously impacts inland aquatic ecosystems. Associated bacterial biofilms respond rapidly to environmental conditions and are potential bioindicators for changes in water quality. This study evaluates the effects of different salinity concentrations (0.3‰–10‰) on bacterial biofilms communities grown in fresh water from Lake Bosten. Bacterial communities associated with biofilms were analyzed using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism and clone library analyses of 16S rRNA genes. Results indicated that the attached bacterial community composition (ABCC) changed over several weeks of biofilm growth, but all followed similar bacterial successional trends in the different salinity groups. Detailed analysis showed the following. (i) ABCC did not differ (P > 0.05) in the low-salinity groups (0.3‰–3.5‰), which may be related to the lower osmotic pressure and the shorter time scale (weeks) of their present habitats. (ii) There were significant differences between the oligosaline (3.5‰) and saline (10‰) groups (P < 0.05). In particular, genus Flavobacterium became dominant in attached bacterial communities in the saline groups. The higher abundance of genus Flavobacterium was possibly due to the biological and metabolic characteristics of the bacteria. (iii) Some bacterial taxa can maintain the higher abundance within attached bacteria in the entire process of biofilms growth, such as the genera Hydrogenophaga and Methyloversatilis in Betaproteobacteria and the family Sphingomonadaceae in Alphaproteobacteria. These data suggested that the bacterial successional trends within biofilms seem almost unaffected by salinity (0.3‰–10‰), but ABCC in saline groups (10‰) are notably changed.