Resource aromaticity affects bacterial community successions in response to different sources of dissolved organic matter.

Microbe-mediated transformation of dissolved organic matter (DOM) contributes substantially to the carbon dynamics and energy flow of aquatic ecosystems; yet, the temporal dynamics of bacterial communities in response to diverse DOM sources are scarcely known. Here, we supplied four distinct sources of DOM (algae-derived, macrophyte-derived, sewage-derived, and soil-derived) to the same bacterial community to track the effects of these DOM sources on the carbon processing and successional dynamics of bacterial communities. Although by the end of the incubation the proportion of bio-degraded DOM was significantly lower in the soil-derived DOM treatment than for the other sources, rapid initial metabolism of protein-like and aliphatic compounds and increasing aromaticity and humification degree of DOM during the incubation period were observed for all sources. The role of stochastic processes in governing the community assembly decreased substantially from 61.4% on the first day to 16.7% at the end of the incubation. Moreover, stronger deterministic selection and lower temporal turnover rate were observed for the soil-derived than the other DOM sources, indicating stronger environmental filtering by the more aromatic DOM. Significant correlations were also observed between the humification index (HIX) of DOM and bacterial community diversities, co-occurrence patterns, habitat niche breadths, and the contribution of deterministic ecological processes. In addition, we demonstrated that taxa with different abundance patterns all play crucial but different roles in the response to DOM variation. Our results indicate the importance of DOM aromaticity as a predictor of the outcome of different DOM sources on bacterial community dynamics.