Seasonal and Environmental Influences on Microbial Community Dynamics in the Dunk River Watershed, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Functional microbial profiles in four Dunk River tributaries on Prince Edward Island show subtle spatial signatures, with the least impacted site driving differences despite no significant taxonomic variation.

• Why it matters: River microbiomes regulate nutrient cycling, yet seasonal and land-use effects on Dunk River microbial structure are poorly characterized in this agriculture- and groundwater-influenced watershed.
• What they did: Shotgun metagenomic sequencing (read depth 1.91–30.44 bp) was used to profile taxonomic and functional community structure across four tributaries, relating patterns to environmental variables and nutrient concentrations.
• The result: Rare taxa correlate with nutrient concentrations, and temporal factors are the primary identifiable drivers among measured variables, while most community variance remains unexplained, consistent with stochastic open-river dynamics.

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