Abstract

Bioflocs are microbial aggregates primarily composed of heterotrophic bacteria that play essential ecological roles in maintaining animal health, gut microbiota, and water quality in biofloc aquaculture systems. Despite the global adoption of biofloc aquaculture for shrimp and fish cultivation, our understanding of biofloc microbiota-particularly the dominant bacterial members and their ecological functions-remains limited. In this study, we employed integrated metataxonomic and metagenomic approaches to demonstrate that the family Rhodobacteraceae of Alphaproteobacteria consistently dominates the biofloc microbiota and plays essential ecological roles. We first analyzed a comprehensive metataxonomic dataset consisting of 200 16S rRNA gene amplicons collected across three Asian countries: South Korea, China, and Vietnam. Taxonomic investigation identified Rhodobacteraceae as the dominant and consistent bacterial members across the datasets. The predominance of this taxon was further validated through metagenomics approaches, including read taxonomy and read recruitment analyses. To explore the ecological roles of Rhodobacteraceae, we applied genome-centric metagenomics, reconstructing 45 metagenome-assembled genomes. Functional annotation of these genomes revealed that dominant Rhodobacteraceae genera, such as Marivita, Ruegeria, Dinoroseobacter, and Aliiroseovarius, are involved in vital ecological processes, including complex carbohydrate degradation, aerobic denitrification, assimilatory nitrate reduction, ammonium assimilation, and sulfur oxidation. Overall, our study reveals that the common practice of carbohydrate addition in biofloc aquaculture systems fosters the growth of specific heterotrophic bacterial communities, particularly Rhodobacteraceae. These bacteria contribute to maintaining water quality by removing toxic nitrogen and sulfur compounds and enhance animal health by colonizing gut microbiota and exerting probiotic effects.

• Keywords: Rhodobacteraceae;Biofloc aquaculture;Biofloc microbiota;Ecological roles;Metagenomics;Nitrogen cycling