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Nonrandom Assembly of Bacterial Populations in Activated Sludge Flocs

  • Environmental Microbiology
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Abstract

The aim of this work was to investigate the dynamics of assembly of bacterial populations in activated sludge flocs. We approached this question by following the development of active bacterial populations during floc development in four replicated lab-scale activated sludge reactors, in which solid retention time (SRT) was set at 4 days. The null hypothesis was that the similarities in community composition could be accounted for by the probability that the same organisms occur in more than one replicated reactor. Microscopic imaging showed that the size of flocs in reactors with biomass retention increased during the first few days until a steady-state size was reached. The diversity and community structure of the sludge in all reactors were analyzed during a period of up to ten SRT, using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction-amplified 16S rRNA. High rates of change in DGGE profiles from consecutive sampling points suggested a high level of dynamics in all reactors. This conclusion was confirmed by the application of the Raup and Crick probability-based similarity index (SRC) for the comparison of rRNA-based fingerprinting patterns, which indicated that bacterial communities within reactors were not significantly similar after three SRT \( \left( {0.05 < {{\text{S}}_{\text{RC}}} < 0.95} \right) \) and became significantly dissimilar after five SRT (SRC < 0.05). More importantly, significant similarity between replicate reactors was observed at all times analyzed (SRC > 0.95). The fact that the patterns between replicates were more reproducible than expected by chance under highly dynamic conditions allowed us to reject the null hypothesis that activated sludge floc communities assemble randomly from the available source pool of bacteria. We suggest that communities progressively recruit from the available pool of bacterial species, each with particular ecological requirements that determine their time of emergence into the community.

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Acknowledgment

We thank Dr. Mario Aguilar for the use of GelCompar software. We also thank an anonymous reviewer for many valuable suggestions and comments. This work was partly funded by FONCyT (PICT 2005 no. 31705) and CONICET (PIP 5548). L.G. is a fellow and L.E. is a career member of CONICET.

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  1. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular (INGEBI-CONICET), Vuelta de Obligado 2490 (C1428ADN), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Joaquín M. Ayarza, Leandro D. Guerrero & Leonardo Erijman

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  1. Joaquín M. Ayarza
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  2. Leandro D. Guerrero
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  3. Leonardo Erijman
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Correspondence to Leonardo Erijman.

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Ayarza, J.M., Guerrero, L.D. & Erijman, L. Nonrandom Assembly of Bacterial Populations in Activated Sludge Flocs. Microb Ecol 59, 436–444 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-009-9581-1

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