Urbanization influenced the interactions between dissolved organic matter and bacterial communities in rivers

Binessi Edouard Ifon; Bob Adyari; Liyuan Hou; Okugbe Ebiotubo Ohore; Azhar Rashid; Chang-Ping Yu; Hu Anyi

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117986

Urbanization influenced the interactions between dissolved organic matter and bacterial communities in rivers

J Environ Manage. 2023 Sep 1:341:117986. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117986. Epub 2023 May 10.

Authors

Binessi Edouard Ifon¹, Bob Adyari², Liyuan Hou³, Okugbe Ebiotubo Ohore⁴, Azhar Rashid⁵, Chang-Ping Yu⁶, Hu Anyi⁷

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China; Fujian Key Laboratory of Watershed Ecology, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, University of Abomey-Calavi, 01 BP 4521, Cotonou, Benin, Benin.
² CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China; Fujian Key Laboratory of Watershed Ecology, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; Department of Environmental Engineering, Universitas Pertamina, Jakarta, 12220, Indonesia.
³ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University, Utah, UT, 84322, USA.
⁴ Institute of Marine Sciences and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology, Shantou University, Shantou, 515063, China.
⁵ Department of Environmental Sciences, The University of Haripur, Haripur, 22620, Pakistan.
⁶ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China.
⁷ CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China; Fujian Key Laboratory of Watershed Ecology, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China. Electronic address: ayhu@iue.ac.cn.

PMID: 37172350
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117986

Abstract

Increased urbanization and anthropogenic activities can alter dissolved organic matter (DOM) and complicate its interaction with bacteria in rivers' ecosystems, however, there is limited information about how bacterial communities respond to DOM components in rivers with different urbanization levels. Here, we combined spectroscopy-based DOM analysis and 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to investigate the associations of bacterial taxa and DOM properties as well as the impacts of DOM on bacterial niche breadth in North River (NR) and West River (WR) of Jiulong River watershed, southern China, which had low and high urbanization levels, respectively. Spectroscopy analysis showed that hydrophilic DOM was predominant in both rivers whereas chromophoric DOM was higher in WR. Network analysis indicated that only seven bacterial genera (i.e., hg clade, chthoniobacter, Geobacter, Acidibacter, Alphal Cluster, Fluviicola, and Lacunisphaera) showed strong associations with DOM optical variables in both rivers, whereas more than 85% of DOM-bacterial genera associations were different between rivers. These results suggest that the relationship between DOM and bacterial communities had different responses in rivers with different urbanization levels. The partial least square path model indicated that the total standardized effect of physico-chemicals on bacterial niche breadth was higher in NR (0.62) than in WR (0.35), whereas humic substances showed an opposite pattern (NR: -0.42; WR: 1.67). The distinct effects of physico-chemicals and DOM on bacterial niche breadths between rivers could be due to the different effects of urbanization and human activities on the environmental conditions of riverine ecosystems. Our findings revealed a huge dissimilarity in the bacteria-DOM co-occurrence networks between rivers with different urbanization levels and provide a novel insight that urbanization may enhance DOM's importance to bacterial niche breadths.

Keywords: Bacterial communities; Co-occurrence networks; Dissolved organic matter; Jiulong River; Niche breadth; PLS-PM.

MeSH terms

Bacteria / genetics
Dissolved Organic Matter*
Ecosystem
Humans
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / genetics
Rivers* / chemistry
Spectrometry, Fluorescence
Urbanization

Substances

Dissolved Organic Matter
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S