Influence of influent wastewater communities on temporal variation of activated sludge communities

Lee, Sang Hoon; Kang, Hye Won; Park, Hee Deung

doi:10.1016/j.watres.2015.01.014

Cited by 126 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Interestingly, population dynamics in the Hanover bioreactors that also shared the same influent were less similar than between plants, likely due to environmental differences caused by the anoxic selector in Hanover 1. Previous studies investigating the impact of immigration from raw influent on activated sludge community structure have found highly variable estimates for the fraction of OTUs shared between influent and activated sludge, from 5-10% OTU overlap (Lee et al, 2015) to 35% . Communities from linked processes within a single WWTP also show evidence for within-plant immigration (Wells et al, 2014) further suggesting that both selection and mass effect mechanisms influence community assembly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional synchrony in full-scale activated sludge bioreactors due to deterministic microbial community assembly

2016

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Seasonal community structure and regionally synchronous population dynamics have been observed in natural microbial ecosystems, but have not been well documented in wastewater treatment bioreactors. Few studies of community dynamics in full-scale activated sludge systems facing similar meteorological conditions have been done to compare the importance of deterministic and neutral community assembly mechanisms. We subjected weekly activated sludge samples from six regional full-scale bioreactors at four wastewater treatment plants obtained over 1 year to Illumina sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA genes, resulting in a library of over 17 million sequences. All samples derived from reactors treating primarily municipal wastewater. Despite variation in operational characteristics and location, communities displayed temporal synchrony at the individual operational taxonomic unit (OTU), broad phylogenetic affiliation and community-wide scale. Bioreactor communities were dominated by 134 abundant and highly regionally synchronized OTU populations that accounted for over 50% of the total reads. Non-core OTUs displayed abundancedependent population synchrony. Alpha diversity varied by reactor, but showed a highly reproducible and synchronous seasonal fluctuation. Community similarity was dominated by seasonal changes, but individual reactors maintained minor stable differences after 1 year. Finally, the impacts of mass migration driven by direct biomass transfers between reactors was investigated, but had no significant effect on community similarity or diversity in the sink community. Our results show that population dynamics in activated sludge bioreactors are consistent with niche-driven assembly guided by seasonal temperature fluctuations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional synchrony in full-scale activated sludge bioreactors due to deterministic microbial community assembly

2016

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“…Therefore, our hypothesis was partially supported by the linear patterns of decline in the richness and evenness of WWTP bacterial communities along the elevation gradient from 1,200 to 3,660 masl. It is noteworthy that all samples investigated in this study were collected in May 2014 and that the fluctuation of WWTP microbial communities in different seasons was not considered (6,8). Thus, the general elevation-dependent patterns of WWTP microbial community richness and evenness should be confirmed further by examining more samples from other seasons, such as winter, and comparisons of the influences of geographical and seasonal variances on the WWTP microbial communities will be an interesting issue in future studies.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…A study by Ofiteru et al indicated that the relative abundances of microbial communities in full-scale WWTPs were determined primarily by stochastic components, such as immigration, random reproduction, and deaths (40). However, Lee et al observed that activated-sludge communities were assembled mostly by niche-based species sorting processes rather than by neutral mechanisms (8). Thus, the power of neutral processes to explain the community variances is still undetermined.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Multiple studies have investigated the significant associations between WWTP microbial community structures and operational parameters or wastewater characteristics, such as dissolved oxygen concentration (2), temperature (3), treatment process (4), influent ammonia nitrogen concentration (5), biological oxygen demand (6), and total phosphorus (TP) concentration (7). However, regardless of the weakly neutral assembly of bacterial communities (8), there is still a large part of the bacterial community variance that cannot be explained by these well-known variables. Thus, it is presumed that there are still other environmental variables that potentially influence the variance of WWTP microbial communities.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Understanding the Linkage between Elevation and the Activated-Sludge Bacterial Community along a 3,600-Meter Elevation Gradient in China

Niu

Wang

et al. 2015

Appl Environ Microbiol

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To understand the relationship between elevation and bacterial communities in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), bacterial communities in 21 municipal WWTPs across China, located 9 to 3,660 m above sea level (masl), were investigated by 454 pyrosequencing. A threshold for the association of elevation with bacterial community richness and evenness was observed at approximately 1,200 masl. At lower elevations, both richness and evenness were not significantly associated with elevation. At higher elevations, significant declines with increased elevations were observed for community richness and evenness. The declining evenness trend at the phylum level was reflected by distinct trends in relative abundance for individual bacterial phyla. Betaproteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes displayed significant increases, while most other phyla showed declines. Spearman correlation analysis indicated that the community richness and evenness at high elevations were more correlated with elevation than with any other single environmental variable. Redundancy analysis indicated that the contribution of elevation to community composition variances increased from 3% at lower elevations to 11% at higher elevations whereas the community composition variance at higher elevations remained much more explained by operational variables (39.2%) than by elevation. The influent total phosphorus concentration, food/microorganism ratio, and treatment process were the three shared dominant contributors to the community composition variance across the whole elevation gradient, followed by effluent ammonia nitrogen and temperature at higher elevations. W astewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are broadly applied for the efficient removal of contaminants from wastewater before its discharge into the natural environment. A complex microbial community is the most dominant contributor to the removal of contaminants in WWTPs. A better understanding of the microbial community structure and its relationship to influential variables could provide important guidance for the improvement of wastewater treatment efficiency (1). Multiple studies have investigated the significant associations between WWTP microbial community structures and operational parameters or wastewater characteristics, such as dissolved oxygen concentration (2), temperature (3), treatment process (4), influent ammonia nitrogen concentration (5), biological oxygen demand (6), and total phosphorus (TP) concentration (7). However, regardless of the weakly neutral assembly of bacterial communities (8), there is still a large part of the bacterial community variance that cannot be explained by these well-known variables. Thus, it is presumed that there are still other environmental variables that potentially influence the variance of WWTP microbial communities.In recent years, a few studies were performed to explore the relationship between microbial communities and geographical locations of WWTPs. Zhang et al. (9) found significant geographical differences in bacterial communities amo...

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“…Ample experimental evidence has provided support for both stochastic and niche-based species-sorting processes in the assembly of bacterial communities in wastewater treatment facilities (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9). An early quantitative survey of bacteria in industrial activated sludge from our laboratory showed that the distribution of the most abundant bacteria fitted a geometric distribution, suggesting that resource competition was a primary factor determining the assembly characteristics of those populations (10).…”

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confidence: 90%

Shotgun Metagenomic Profiles Have a High Capacity To Discriminate Samples of Activated Sludge According to Wastewater Type

Ibarbalz

Orellana

Figuerola

et al. 2016

Appl Environ Microbiol

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This study was conducted to investigate whether functions encoded in the metagenome could improve our ability to understand the link between microbial community structures and functions in activated sludge. By analyzing data sets from six industrial and six municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), covering different configurations, operational conditions, and geographic regions, we found that wastewater influent composition was an overriding factor shaping the metagenomic composition of the activated sludge samples. Community GC content profiles were conserved within treatment plants on a time scale of years and between treatment plants with similar influent wastewater types. Interestingly, GC contents of the represented phyla covaried with the average GC contents of the corresponding WWTP metagenome. This suggests that the factors influencing nucleotide composition act similarly across taxa and thus the variation in nucleotide contents is driven by environmental differences between WWTPs. While taxonomic richness and functional richness were correlated, shotgun metagenomics complemented taxon-based analyses in the task of classifying microbial communities involved in wastewater treatment systems. The observed taxonomic dissimilarity between full-scale WWTPs receiving influent types with varied compositions, as well as the inferred taxonomic and functional assignment of recovered genomes from each metagenome, were consistent with underlying differences in the abundance of distinctive sets of functional categories. These conclusions were robust with respect to plant configuration, operational and environmental conditions, and even differences in laboratory protocols. IMPORTANCEThis work contributes to the elucidation of drivers of microbial community assembly in wastewater treatment systems. Our results are significant because they provide clear evidence that bacterial communities in WWTPs assemble mainly according to influent wastewater characteristics. Differences in bacterial community structures between WWTPs were consistent with differences in the abundance of distinctive sets of functional categories, which were related to the metabolic potential that would be expected according to the source of the wastewater.

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Influence of influent wastewater communities on temporal variation of activated sludge communities

Cited by 126 publications

References 33 publications

Regional synchrony in full-scale activated sludge bioreactors due to deterministic microbial community assembly

Regional synchrony in full-scale activated sludge bioreactors due to deterministic microbial community assembly

Understanding the Linkage between Elevation and the Activated-Sludge Bacterial Community along a 3,600-Meter Elevation Gradient in China

Shotgun Metagenomic Profiles Have a High Capacity To Discriminate Samples of Activated Sludge According to Wastewater Type

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