Wang Wei, Huang Hanjie, He Zhongshi, Zhang Guotao, Lv Junping, Liu Qi, Nan Fangru, Liu Xudong, Xie Shulian, Feng Jia
School of Life Science Shanxi University Taiyuan China.
Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Baltimore Maryland USA.
Ecol Evol. 2024 Dec 3;14(12):e70656. doi: 10.1002/ece3.70656. eCollection 2024 Dec.
Functional groups (FGs) represent a classification scheme designed to study the ecological adaptations of phytoplankton. However, FG dynamics studies in phytoplankton are often conducted independent of taxonomic studies, so the factors influencing community dynamics have not been sufficiently investigated or compared between the two classification systems. In this study, we compared the intricate relationship between taxonomic and FG compositions in North China lakes and delve into the key environmental drivers shaping phytoplankton community dynamics. This investigation revealed that taxonomic and FG classifications exhibit high qualitative and quantitative similarities in the community structure. Environmental drivers had a stronger influence on the FG structure than taxonomic composition, indicating that the FG classification does not result in the loss of ecological information regarding the community structure, even with the reduced number of grouping units. Indeed, it was evident that FGs contained a larger quantity of ecological information. These conclusions were further verified using lakes in eastern China. Additionally, we found that climatic-geographical factors usually exerted indirect influences, by altering water chemistry, while water chemical factors had more direct and stronger influences. The combined effects of both types of environmental factors had a greater impact on the phytoplankton FG structure than on taxonomic composition. In conclusion, we believe that an in-depth study of FGs will better focus on the ecological characteristics of phytoplankton, while also avoiding the need for extensive species identification.
功能组（FGs）是一种用于研究浮游植物生态适应性的分类方案。然而，浮游植物功能组动态的研究通常独立于分类学研究进行，因此在这两种分类系统之间，影响群落动态的因素尚未得到充分研究或比较。在本研究中，我们比较了中国北方湖泊中分类组成与功能组组成之间的复杂关系，并深入探讨了塑造浮游植物群落动态的关键环境驱动因素。这项调查表明，分类学和功能组分类在群落结构上表现出高度的定性和定量相似性。环境驱动因素对功能组结构的影响比对分类组成的影响更强，这表明功能组分类即使在分组单元数量减少的情况下，也不会导致群落结构生态信息的丢失。事实上，很明显功能组包含了更多的生态信息。这些结论在中国东部湖泊中得到了进一步验证。此外，我们发现气候地理因素通常通过改变水化学来施加间接影响，而水化学因素具有更直接和更强的影响。这两种环境因素的综合作用对浮游植物功能组结构的影响比对分类组成的影响更大。总之，我们认为深入研究功能组将更好地聚焦浮游植物的生态特征，同时也避免了对大量物种进行鉴定的需求。
