Characterizing sediment bacterial community and identifying the biological indicators in a seawater-freshwater transition zone during the wet and dry seasons

Seawater intrusion has a detrimental effect on agriculture, industry, and human health. One question of particular interest is how the microbial community responds to and reflects seawater intrusion with seasonal variation. The current study explored the seasonal changes in bacterial community composition and interaction in the vicinity of Pearl River Estuary in dry season (January) and wet season (September). Results indicated that the salinity of sediment samples obtained in dry season was higher than that in wet season. The salt stress induced a declined alpha diversity but resulted in a loosely connected and unstable biotic interaction network in the bacterial communities. Random forest prediction and redundancy analysis of bacterial community indicated that salinity substantially affected the bacterial communities. Multiple lines of evidence, including the enrichment of bacterial taxa in the high-salinity location, microbe-microbe interactions, environment-microbe interactions, and machine learning approach, demonstrated that the families Moraxellaceae and Planococcaceae were the keystone taxa and were resistant to salt stress, which suggested that both of them can be used as potential biological indicators of monitoring and controlling seawater intrusion in coastal zone areas.