Skip to main content

Microbial community structure of a freshwater system receiving wastewater effluent

Environmental Monitoring and Assessment volume 188, Article number: 626 (2016) Cite this article

Abstract

Despite our dependency on treatment facilities to condition wastewater for eventual release to the environment, our knowledge regarding the effects of treated water on the local watershed is extremely limited. Responses of lotic systems to the treated wastewater effluent have been traditionally investigated by examining the benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages and community structure; however, these studies do not address the microbial diversity of the water systems. In the present study, planktonic and benthic bacterial community structure were examined at 14 sites (from 60 m upstream to 12,100 m downstream) and at two time points along an aquatic system receiving treated effluent from the Charleston Wastewater Treatment Plant (Charleston, IL). Total bacterial DNA was isolated and 16S rRNA sequences were analyzed using a metagenomics platform. The community structure in planktonic bacterial communities was significantly correlated with dissolved oxygen concentration. Benthic bacterial communities were not correlated with water quality but did have a significant geographic structuring. A local restructuring effect was observed in both planktonic and benthic communities near the treated wastewater effluent, which was characterized by an increase in abundance of sphingobacteria. Sites further downstream from the wastewater facility appeared to be less influenced by the effluent. Overall, the present study demonstrated the utility of targeted high-throughput sequencing as a tool to assess the effects of treated wastewater effluent on a receiving water system, and highlighted the potential for this technology to be used for routine monitoring by wastewater facilities.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price includes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

References

  • Al-Awadhi, H., Dashti, N., Khanafer, M., Al-Mailem, D., Ali, N., & Radwan, S. (2013). Bias problems in culture-independent analysis of environmental bacterial communities: a representative study on hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria. Springerplus, 2, 369–380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amann, R., Ludwig, W., & Schleifer, K. H. (1995). Phylogenetic identification and in situ detection of individual microbial cells without cultivation. Microbiological Reviews, 59, 143–169.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bae, Y., Kil, H., & Bae, K. (2005). Benthic macroinvertebrates for uses in stream biomonitoring and restoration. KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, 9, 55–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bartram, A., Lynch, M., Stearns, J., Moreno-Hagelsieb, G., & Neufeld, J. (2011). Generation of multimillion-sequence 16S rRNA gene libraries from complex microbial communities by assembling paired-end Illumina reads. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 77, 3846–3852.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Biggs, B. (2000). Eutrophication of streams and rivers: dissolved nutrient-chlorophyll relationships for benthic algae. Journal North American Benthol Social, 19, 17–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, B., Riley, T., & Taylor, R. (2006). Water quality of effluent-dominated ecosytems: ecotoxicological, hydrological, and management considerations. Hydrobiologia, 556, 365–379.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burnham, K. P., & Anderson, D. R. (2002). Model selection and multimodal inference: a practical information-theoretic approach (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer Science + Business Media.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cairns Jr., J., & Pratt, J. R. (1993). A history of biological monitoring using benthic macroinvertebrates. In R. DM & V. H. Resh (Eds.), Freshwater biomonitoring and benthic macroinvertebrates. New York, NY: Chapman & Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cao, Y., Bark, A., & Williams, P. (1996). Measuring the responses of macroinvertebrate communities to water pollution: a comparison of multivariate approaches, biotic and diversity indices. Hydrobiologia, 341, 1–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, S., Caraco, N., Correll, D., Howarth, R., Sharpley, A., & Smith, V. (1998). Nonpoint pollution of surface waters with phosphorus and nitrogen. Ecological Applications, 8, 559–568.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clarridge, J. (2004). Impact of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis for identification of bacteria on clincical microbiology and infection diseases. Clinical Microbiology Reviews, 17, 840–862.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daims, H., Taylor, M., & Wagner, M. (2006). Wastewater treatment: a model system for microbial ecology. Trends in Biotechnology, 24, 483–489.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Desai, C., Pathlak, H., & Madamwar, D. (2010). Advances in molecular and “-omic” technologies to gauge microbial communities and bioremediation at xenobiotic/anthropogen contaminated sites. Bioresource Technology, 101, 1558–1569.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Drury, B., Rosi-Marshall, E., & Kelly, J. (2013). Wastewater treatment effluent reduces abundance and diversity of benthic bacterial communities in urban and suburban rivers. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 79, 1897–1905.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaufin, A., & Tarzwell, C. (1956). Aquatic macro-invertebrate communities as indicators of organic pollution in Lytle Creek. Sewage and Industrial Wastes, 28, 906–924.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilbride, K., Lee, D., & Beaudette, L. (2006). Molecular techniques in wastewater: understanding microbial communities, detecting pathogens, and real-time process control. Journal Microbiol Methods, 66, 1–20.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldenfeld, N. (2014). Looking in the right direction: Carl Woese and evolutionary biology. RNA Biology, 11, 248–253.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grimm, N., Faeth, S., Golubiewski, N., Redman, C., Wu, J., Bai, X., & Briggs, J. (2008). Global change and the ecology of cities. Science, 319, 756–760.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gucker, B., Brauns, M., & Pusch, M. (2006). Effects of wastewater treatment plants discharge on ecosystem structure and function of lowland streams. Journal North American Benthol Society, 25, 313–329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hugenholtz, P., Goebel, B., & Pace, N. (1998). Impact of culture-independent studies on emerging phylogenetic view of bacterial diversity. Journal of Bacteriology, 180, 4756–4774.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kämpfer, P. T. (2010). Order Sphingobacteriales. In N. R. Krieg, W. Ludwig, W. Whitman, B. P. Hedlund, B. J. Paster, J. T. Staley, N. Ward, D. Brown, & A. Parte (Eds.), Bergey’s manual of systematic bacteriology (Vol. 4, 2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koonin, E. (2014). Carl Woese’s vision of cellular evolution and the domains of life. RNA Biology, 11, 197–204.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kozich, J., Westcott, S., Baxter, N., Highlander, S., & Schloss, P. (2013). Development of a dual-index sequencing strategy and curation pipeline for analyzing amplicon sequence data on the MiSeq Illumina sequencing platform. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 81, 5112–5120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lambiase, A. (2014). The family Sphingobacteriaceae. In E. Rosenberg, E. F. DeLong, S. Lory, E. Stackebrandt, & F. Thompson (Eds.), The prokaryotes. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Legendre, P., & Anderson, M. J. (1999). Distance-based redundancy analysis: testing multispecies responses in multifactorial ecological experiments. Ecological Monographs, 69, 1–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Legendre, P., & Legendre, L. (2012). Numerical ecology (3rd ed.). Amsterdam, NL: Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • McLellan, S., Huse, S., Mueller-Spitz, S., Andreishcheva, E., & Sogin, M. (2010). Diversity and population structure of sewage-derived microorganisms in wastewater treatment plant influent. Environmental Microbiology, 12, 378–392.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nold, S., & Zwart, G. (1998). Patterns and governing forces in aquatic microbial communities. Aquatic Ecology, 32, 17–35.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Qasim, S. R. (1999). Wastewater treatment plants: planning, design, and operation (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quast, C., Pruesse, E., Yilmaz, P., Gerken, J., Schweer, T., Yarza, P., Peplies, J., & Glöckner, F. O. (2013). The SILVA ribosomal RNA gene database project: improved data processing and web-based tools. Nuclear Acids Research, 41, D590–D596.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rajendhran, J., & Gunasekaran, P. (2011). Microbial phylogeny and diversity: small subunit ribosomal RNA sequence analysis and beyond. Microbiological Research, 166, 99–110.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sanapareddy, N., Hamp, T., Gonzalez, L., Helene, H., Fodor, A., & Clinton, S. (2009). Molecular diversity of a North Carolina wastewater treatment plant as revealed by pyrosequencing. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 75, 1688–1696.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schloss, P., Westcott, S., Ryabin, T., Hall, J., Hartmann, M., Hollister, E., Lesnewski, R., Oakley, B., Parks, D., Robinson, C., Sahl, J., Stres, B., Thallinger, G., Van Horn, D., & Weber, C. (2009). Introducing mothur: open-source, platform-independent, community-supported software for describing and comparing microbial communities. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 75, 7537–7541.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schluter, A., Krause, L., Szczepanowski, R., Goesmann, A., & Puhler, A. (2008). Genetic diversity and composition of a plasmid metagenome from a wastewater treatment plant. Journal of Biotechnology, 136, 65–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, B., & Wilson, J. B. (1996). A consumer’s guide to evenness indices. Oikos, 76, 70–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szczepanowski, R., Bekel, T., Goesmann, A., Krause, L., Kromeke, H., Kaiser, O., Eichler, W., Puhler, A., & Schluter, A. (2008). Insight into the plasmid metagenome of wastewater treatment plant bacteria showing reduced susceptibility to antimicrobial drugs analysed by the 454-pyrosequencing technology. Journal of Biotechnology, 136, 54–64.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szczepanowski, R., Linke, B., Krahn, I., Garteman, K., Gutzkow, T., Eichler, W., Puhler, A., & Schluter, A. (2009). Detection of 140 clinically relevant antibiotic-resistance genes in the plasmid metagenome of wastewater treatment plant bacteria showing reduced susceptibility to selected antibiotics. Microbiology, 155, 2306–2319.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2010. Treating contaminants of emerging concern. EPA-820-R-10-002.

  • Wallace, J., & Webster, J. (1996). The role of macroinvertebrates in stream ecosystem function. Annual Review of Entomology, 41, 115–139.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wynes, D., & Wissing, T. (1981). Effects of water quality on fish and macroinvertebrate communities. The Ohio Journal of Science, 81, 259–267.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ye, Y. F., Min, H., & Du, Y. F. (2004). Characterization of a strain of Sphingobacterium sp. and its degradation to herbicide mefenacet. Journal of Environmental Sciences, 16, 343–347.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a Council on Faculty Research grant by Eastern Illinois University to Drs. Novak and Canam and a Graduate Assistantship provided to the Department of Biological Sciences at Eastern Illinois University by the City of Charleston, IL, through the Charleston Wastewater Treatment Plant

Author information

Author notes

  1. Daniel B. Johnson

    Present address: OneWater Incorporated, Indianapolis, IN, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, USA

    Matthew D. Hladilek, Karen F. Gaines, James M. Novak, Daniel B. Johnson & Thomas Canam

  2. Public Works Department, Wastewater Treatment, Charleston, IL, USA

    David A. Collard

Authors
  1. Matthew D. Hladilek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Karen F. Gaines
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. James M. Novak
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. David A. Collard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Daniel B. Johnson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Thomas Canam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Canam.

Electronic supplementary material

Fig. S1

(DOCX 429 kb)

Fig. S2

(DOCX 469 kb)

Table S1

The number of organizational taxonomic units (OTUs) at the family level for all planktonic and benthic samples at T1 (November 18, 2011) and T2 (November 25, 2011) (XLSX 2308 kb)

Table S2

(DOCX 15 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hladilek, M.D., Gaines, K.F., Novak, J.M. et al. Microbial community structure of a freshwater system receiving wastewater effluent. Environ Monit Assess 188, 626 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-016-5630-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-016-5630-7

Keywords

  • 16S rRNA
  • Effluent
  • Microbiome
  • Wastewater