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The Removal of Antibiotics in Relation to a Microbial Community in an Integrated Constructed Wetland for Tail Water Decontamination

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Abstract

An integrated constructed wetland (ICW) with six subsystems has been operated for six years (60,000 Ton day−1) and exhibited strong stability and high efficiency for removing conventional pollutants in tail water. This study was aimed to characterize the removal efficiency of antibiotics in relation to bacterial community structure and composition in this integrated constructed wetland. Water samples were taken from different ICW sites in two distinct seasons (i.e. winter and summer). The results showed that concentrations of antibiotics in ICW decreased from influent to effluent with varying removal rates among the different antibiotics (quinolones, ulfonamides and macrolides). The pyrosequencing of 16S ribosomal DNA revealed that the composition of dominant phyla could be grouped into four bacterial clusters and the key discriminant phyla, family or genera from each cluster was strongly associated with the specific physicochemical parameters of water or type of antibiotics. Members of the key phyla (Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Parcubacteria, and Actinobacteria) appeared to play an important role in antibiotics removal. In general, both the concentration of antibiotics and physicochemical parameters of water shaped the bacterial communities. These results improve our understanding of the interactions between antibiotics or water physiochemical parameters and bacterial communities in the integrated constructed wetland.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by key program from Zhejiang Science & Technology Bureau (#2015C03007; #2018C02029); the key research and development projects from of Ministry of Science and Technology, China (#2016YFD0800805; #2019YFD0120801), and The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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  1. Anqi Shan and Wenjia Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Environmental Remediation and Ecological Health, Ministry of Education, College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Anqi Shan, Wenjia Wang, Kyong Ju Kang, Dandi Hou, Jipeng Luo, Gang Wang, Minghui Pan, Ying Feng & Xiaoe Yang

  2. School of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo, 315211, China

    Dandi Hou

  3. Indian River Research and Education Center, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Fort Pierce, FL, 34945, USA

    Zhenli He

  4. Faculty of Environmental Science, University of Science, Pyong yang, 00850, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

    Kyong Ju Kang

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  1. Anqi Shan
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Correspondence to Xiaoe Yang.

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Shan, A., Wang, W., Kang, K.J. et al. The Removal of Antibiotics in Relation to a Microbial Community in an Integrated Constructed Wetland for Tail Water Decontamination. Wetlands 40, 993–1004 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-019-01262-8

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