The Effects of Water Level Fluctuation on Zooplankton Communities in Shahu Lake Based on DNA Metabarcoding and Morphological Methods

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The water level in Shahu Lake varies greatly during an annual cycle: ~4 m deep to nearly dry. Over the course of one year we studied the relationship between zooplankton diversity and the water level in Shahu Lake using DNA metabarcoding. The morphology method was compared with the DNA metabarcoding method to see whether the results were replicable. The results were highly consistent for α-diversity and the community composition of zooplankton using both methods; both methods also showed a significant relationship between the zooplankton community composition and water level. Our research contributes to the application of the DNA metabarcoding method and aquatic ecological investigations. ABSTRACT: Background: The water level of Poyang Lake (China) fluctuates seasonally. Shahu Lake, a smaller body of water connected to Poyang Lake during the wet season, is separated in the dry season. Due to a special fishing method termed ‘lake enclosed in autumn’, the water level is lowered and reaches its lowest point in January, which is <0.5 m deep in the middle of the lake. Our research investigated the effect of water level changes on the zooplankton community composition in Shahu Lake. Methods: We used both DNA metabarcoding method (MBC) (18S rRNA gene V4 region) and morphological method (MOI) to track the zooplankton community structure over four seasons in Shahu Lake (China). Results: Totals of 90 and 98 species of zooplankton were detected by MOI and MBC, respectively, with rotifers being the main zooplankton component. The α-diversity index of both methods increased from spring to summer and decreased from summer to autumn, reaching the lowest value in winter. NMDS and a cluster analysis showed that all zooplankton communities detected by MOI and MBC were significantly separated by season. The zooplankton community in winter was separated from that of the other three seasons, but the summer and autumn communities were more similar. Conclusions: Changes in the water level had significant effects on the zooplankton community composition. We found that MBC was more able to detect the differences in the zooplankton composition than MOI. MBC also had more advantages in copepod recognition. In our study, 37 species of copepods were detected by MBC, but only 11 species were detected by MOI. We concluded that MBC should be used to research the seasonal variations of zooplankton.