The microbial food web in the Doñana marshland: Influence of trophic state and hydrology

We investigated the composition of the microbial food web in the marshland of Doñana National Park (SW Spain). We analysed factors affecting the predominance of autotrophic (A) or heterotrophic (H) microorganisms in a set of 16 marshland water bodies that differ in their hydrological pattern. Autotrophic organisms were predominant in the Doñana marshland, with autotrophs between 0.3 and 25.3 times higher than heterotrophs in biomass. The variance partitioning analysis using the log A:H biomass ratio (A/H) as a response variable revealed that water body spatial position accounted for the largest portion of total variance (16% of unique effects), followed by environmental variables (13%), with a shared variation of 24%. Zooplankton biomass had no significant influence on A/H ratio. The two first axes of RDA analysis were related to soluble reactive phosphate (SRP) and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentrations respectively. Cyanobacteria were predominant in waters with high SRP, while other organisms were distributed in relation to DIN by their size, with small organisms predominating with low DIN and large ones with high DIN. Spatial effects reflect the importance of location with respect to the water source in this marshland, where flooding areas are very much dominated by autotrophs, while confined areas, which are a long way from nutrient sources, have a more balanced abundance of autotrophs and heterotrophs.