Data from: Effects of Temporal, Spatial and Environmental Factors on Ciliates Community in Northeastern South China Sea, with Notes on Co-Occurrence Patterns of Environment, Phytoplankton and Ciliate

Little is known about temp-spatial variations and determining mechanism of microplankton community from continental shelf to deep basin. Here, the distribution and determinants of ciliates in the northeastern South China Sea were investigated in summer and winter. We found that the alpha diversity were generally similar but community composition showed clear difference in summer and winter. For spatial dimension, the alpha diversity significantly decreased from neritic water to deep, and the variations of community composition were only detected between upper and deep water. The determinants of community varied depending on research scale. For entire community, the variations was higher explained by environmental factors than by temp-spatial factors. Specially, physical factors were the main determinants, which may attribute to the effects of physical processes occurred in research area. For the three spatial subareas, season showed more significant influences on communities than other factors. Network analyses revealed that the ciliate exhibited more relationships with phytoplankton than with environment factors. Diatom and physical factors accounted for most of the ciliate-phytoplankton-environment co-occurrence relationships, suggesting their significant influences to the community stability of microbial food web. This study improves our understanding for the mechanisms of community structuring of microzooplankton in the open sea across both space and time.