Dinoflagellate blooms reshape bacterioplankton assembly and alter free-living and particle-attached community dynamics with implications for harmful algal bloom processes.

Bacterioplankton community assembly shifts from stochastic to deterministic processes during Scrippsiella acuminata blooms, with increased environmental filtering in later stages.

• Why it matters: Understanding how harmful algal blooms alter microbial community assembly is crucial for predicting their ecological impacts and managing coastal ecosystem health.
• What they did: Using 16S rRNA gene high-throughput sequencing, the study characterized bacterioplankton succession across four bloom stages, focusing on diversity changes and assembly mechanisms.
• The result: Findings reveal that bloom progression differentially restructures free-living and particle-attached bacterioplankton, with stochastic processes dominating early and deterministic processes gaining influence later, highlighting potential bacterial roles in bloom dynamics.