Different marine heterotrophic nanoflagellates affect differentially the composition of enriched bacterial communities.

We studied the effects of predation on the cytometric and phylogenetic features of two enriched bacterial communities obtained from two cultures of marine heterotrophic nanoflagellates: Jakoba libera and a mixed culture of Cafeteria sp. and Monosiga sp. Protists were harvested by flow cytometric cell sorting and eight different treatments were prepared. Each bacterial community was incubated with and without protists, and we added two treatments with protists and the bacteria present after the sorting procedure (cosorted bacteria). The bacterial community derived from the culture of Jakoba libera had higher green fluorescence per cell (FL1) than that derived from the mixed culture of Cafeteria sp. and Monosiga sp. When the experiment began all treatments presented bacterial communities that increase in fluorescence per bacterium (FL1); after that the FL1 decreased when bacteria attained maximal concentrations; and, finally, there was a new increase in FL1 toward the end of the experiment. Cosorted bacteria of Jakoba libera had the same fluorescence as the bacterial community derived from this protist, while the bacteria derived from the mixed culture of Cafeteria sp. and Monosiga sp. was nearly twice as fluorescent than that of the parental community. All treatments presented a general decline of SSC along the incubation. Therefore, there was a small influence of protists on the cytometric signature of each bacterial community. However, each bacterial community preyed by Jakoba libera or the mixed culture of Cafeteria sp. and Monosiga sp. led to four different phylogenetic fingerprint. Besides, the final Communities were different from the fingerprint of controls without protists, and most of them diverge from the fingerprint of cosorted bacteria. Our results confirm that changes in the phylogenetic composition of marine bacterial communities may depend on the initial communities of both bacteria and protists.