A microbial perspective on the local influence of Arctic rivers and estuaries on Hudson Bay (Canada)

A clear divide typically exists between freshwater and marine microbial communities, with transitional communities found in estuarine zones. The estuarine communities can derive from inflowing rivers and the sea via tidal mixing and incursions or be comprised of unique brackish species, depending on flow regimes and retention time within an estuary. Only a few studies have been carried out in the Arctic, where moderate salinities associated with the influence of seasonal ice melt could potentially favor marine microbes adapted to lower salinities in fresh-to-saltwater transition zones irrespective of river flows and tidal mixing. To test this idea, we examined early summer microbial communities in 2 western Hudson Bay (Canada) river-to-sea systems: the Churchill and Nelson river systems. Both rivers originate from the same headwaters, suggesting similar catchment conditions, but differ in geomorphology and hydroelectric diversions that induce very different flow and stratification regimes. Using amplicons of the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene, we identified distinct riverine bacterial communities that were significantly different from the 2 associated estuaries and offshore communities. In the much smaller Churchill Estuary, the microbial community showed a marked influence of freshwater microbial species, along with marine influences. In contrast, in the larger high-flow Nelson River Estuary, riverine bacterioplankton were less evident in the estuary, where the marine signal was much stronger. The marine samples in both systems differed somewhat consistently with the phenology of the phytoplankton bloom in the Bay and tended to harbor distinct attached and free-living bacterial communities. Our results highlight the relevance of river flow and estuarine circulation on selection of bacterial species in estuaries, with ecological implications for food web functionality and biogeochemical cycles in the Anthropocene, where flow regimes would be affected by larger climatic variability.