Optimum environmental conditions controlling prevalence of vibrio parahaemolyticus in marine environment

Abstract

This literature review presents major environmental indicators and their optimum variation ranges for the prevalence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in the marine environment by critically reviewing and statistically analyzing more than one hundred studies from countries around the world. Results of this review indicated that the prevalence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in the marine environment is primarily responsive to favorable environmental conditions that are described with environmental indicators. The importance of environmental indicators to the prevalence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus can be ranked from the highest to lowest as Sea Surface Temperature (SST), salinity, pH, chlorophyll a, and turbidity, respectively. It was also found in this study that each environmental indicator has an optimum variation range favoring the prevalence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Specifically, the SST range of 25.67 ± 2 °C, salinity range of 27.87 ± 3 ppt, and pH range of 7.96 ± 0.1 were found to be the optimum conditions for the prevalence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus. High vibrio concentrations were also observed in water samples with the chlorophyll a range of 16-25 μg/L. The findings provide new insights into the importance of environmental indicators and their optimum ranges, explaining not only the existence of both positive and negative associations reported in the literature but also the dynamic associations between the Vibrio presence and its environmental drivers.

Keywords: Environmental indicators; Generalized additive model; Optimum conditions; Prevalence; Random forest; Vibrio parahaemolyticus.