Elevated water nutrient levels promote co-occurrence of sediment microbiota in white-leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) culture ponds

Abstract

Aquatic microbiota plays crucial roles in biogeochemical processes. However, whether the water nutrients and co-occurrence of sediment microbiota in white-leg shrimp culture ponds increases during culture is unclear. We investigated the water nutrients and sediment microbiota in six white-leg shrimp culture ponds during culture using high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Our results showed that water total nitrogen (TN), NO₃-N, NO₂-N, and total phosphorus were typically increased during the white-leg shrimp culture process. Although the overall structure of the sediment microbiota in the ponds was not altered during culture, the relative abundance of Caldicoprobacter, Dechloromonas, Erysipelothrix, Hydrogenophaga, and Mariniradius gradually decreased. Particularly, the co-occurrence of sediment microbiota among the different ponds was enhanced during the culture process. The concentrations of TN, NO₃-N, and total organic carbon in the water were significantly positively correlated with the average weighted degree, average clustering coefficient, and total triangles of the co-occurrence networks of the sediment microbiota. These results imply the accumulation of nutrients in the pond water probably promoted the co-occurrence of sediment microbiota, which implying the convergence of the sediment microbiota across ponds. Therefore, microbial cooccurrence has potential to be an index to measure the nutritional status of aquaculture ponds.