Site-specific environmental factors control bacterial and viral diversity in stormwater retention ponds

Abstract

Stormwater retention ponds are ubiquitous in urban and suburban landscapes of the United States. Most studies of the microbiology of these ponds have focused on the abundance and removal efficiency of fecal indicator bacteria. Here we provide the first comprehensive study of microbial community diversity and activity in these ponds, and assess how different environmental and engineering factors influence these communities. Watershed land-use had no grouping effect on pond geochemistry or biology. Instead, we found that microbial community composition and activity were best explained by site-specific environmental variables. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that bacterial community structure varied greatly across sampled ponds, and appeared to be the result of autochthonous bacterial growth and not simply surface runoff. Metagenomic sequencing of pond viral communities suggested that viral taxa were influenced by external inputs, with viromes composed of bacteriophage that infect environmental bacteria, as well as viruses that infect eukaryotes and phages that infect bacteria pathogenic to eukaryotes. Collectively, our results indicate that the environmental conditions and microbial communities of these ponds vary greatly, even among ponds in close spatial proximity, and that pond microbial communities appear to be shaped by site-specific environmental factors.

Resilience to multiple stressors in an aquatic plant and its microbiome

“…; see Fig. and Kivanc et al., ; Saxton et al., ), and while they were coarsely similar across field sites (Fig. ), we observed high turnover at the sequence variant level.…”

Implication of Viral Infections for Greenhouse Gas Dynamics in Freshwater Wetlands: Challenges and Perspectives

“…We found that in the last 10 years since Jackson and Jackson (2008), <30 studies had been published and the research focus on freshwater virology has increased twofold ranging from quantitative and qualitative aspects of the viral ecology to virus-prokaryote interactions, metagenomics, and method development (Supplementary Figures S1A,B, Supplementary Table S1). Most of the studies performed in riparian wetlands (Rooks et al, 2010; Fancello et al, 2013; Kyle and Grant, 2013; Basemer, 2015; Alexyuk et al, 2016; Saxton et al, 2016) and freshwater marshes (Leroy et al, 2008; Thomas et al, 2011; Kyle and Grant, 2013; Zheng et al, 2013; Motlagh et al, 2017; Qin et al, 2017; Dalcin Martins et al, 2018). Few studies were also performed in wetland microcosms (Pradeep Ram and Sime-Ngando, 2008, 2010; Esteban et al, 2015), and few others were in the form of reviews (Middelboe et al, 2008; Wilhelm and Matteson, 2008; Danovaro et al, 2008a; Neori Amir, 2017).…”

Agricultural Freshwater Pond Supports Diverse and Dynamic Bacterial and Viral Populations

“…While limited in their scope, these studies have provided some of the first data on freshwater phage ecology, demonstrating that, like their hosts, phage diversity is influenced by environmental factors. However, only a few studies have evaluated freshwater viromes from small lakes/ponds and fewer have looked at freshwater viromes in conjunction with a temporal analysis of fine scale host diversity ( Fancello et al, 2013 ; Saxton et al, 2016 ).…”