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Diel Dynamics of Freshwater Bacterial Communities at Beaches in Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, Windsor, Ontario

  • Microbiology of Aquatic Systems
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Abstract

Bacteria play a key role in freshwater biogeochemical cycling as well as water safety, but short-term trends in freshwater bacterial community composition and dynamics are not yet well characterized. We sampled four public beaches in southern Ontario, Canada; in June, July, and August (2016) over a 24-h (diel) cycle at 2-h intervals. Using high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene, we found substantial bi-hourly and day/night variation in the bacterial communities with considerable fluctuation in the relative abundance of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria phyla. Moreover, relative abundance of Enterobacteriaceae (associated with potential health risk) was significantly high at night in some dial cycles. Diversity was significantly high at night across most of the diel sampling events. qPCR assays showed a substantial bi-hourly variation of Escherichia coli levels with a significant high level of E. coli at night hours in comparison with day hours and the lowest levels at noon and during the afternoon hours. Taken together, these findings highlighted a considerable short-term temporal variation of bacterial communities which helps better understanding of freshwater bacterial dynamics and their ecology. E. coli monitoring showed that multiple samples in different hours will provide more accurate picture of freshwater safety and human health risk.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Shelby Mackie (Environmental Genomics Facility, Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, Windsor University) for her support and assistance in eDNA extraction and sequencing of the samples. We also thank Keta Patel, Farwa Ziab, Mubarak Zaib, Amber Shaheen, and Zahra Taboun for their assistance in water sample processing and filtration.

Funding

This project was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) post-graduate funding to AHS and NSERC Strategic Partnership Grants for Projects funding to DDH for lab and field costs.

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Author notes

  1. Subba Rao Chaganti

    Present address: Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, N9B 3P4, Canada

    Abdolrazagh Hashemi Shahraki, Subba Rao Chaganti & Daniel D Heath

  2. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

    Daniel D Heath

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  1. Abdolrazagh Hashemi Shahraki
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Correspondence to Daniel D Heath.

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Shahraki, A.H., Chaganti, S.R. & Heath, D.D. Diel Dynamics of Freshwater Bacterial Communities at Beaches in Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, Windsor, Ontario. Microb Ecol 81, 1–13 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01539-0

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