ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Aquatic Microbiology
Dynamic changes of protist community composition along a surface water-groundwater transect in the Danube wetland Lobau, Vienna, Austria
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
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Groundwater remains an unexplored habitat in terms of protistan diversity and community dynamics, when compared to better-studied surface aquatic environments. To address this knowledge gap, a comparison of protistan communities found at two differing sites, a wetland surface water body and the close-by shallow aquifer, aims to shed light on environmental drivers of both the total and active protist communities using molecular analyses. The two-year time series with monthly samplings provided insight into seasonal patterns, and barcoding allowed taxonomic affiliation. Our study identified differences in community composition and trophic modes with the habitat type. Protistan communities in shallow groundwater exhibited pronounced seasonal dynamics apparently temporally linked to the surface water counterparts. Higher absolute water levels in the backwater compared to groundwater, and the significant fraction of phototrophic protists sampled from the shallow aquifer, are consistent with groundwater recharge from surface water influencing groundwater protistan community composition.
Keywords: Groundwater ecology, groundwater eukaryotes, groundwater protist communities, protist diversity, surface-groundwater environmental gradient
Received: 19 Nov 2025; Accepted: 12 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Cukusic, Karwautz, Murhammer, Rasch, Biletska and Griebler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Clemens Karwautz
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