Human Fecal Contamination Corresponds to Changes in the Freshwater Bacterial Communities of a Large River Basin.

ABSTRACT: Microbial water quality is generally monitored by culturable fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), which are intended to signal human health risk due to fecal pollution. However, FIB have limited utility in most urbanized watersheds as they do not discriminate among fecal pollution sources, tend to make up a small fraction of the total microbial community, and do not inform on pollution impacts on the native ecosystem. To move beyond these limitations, we assessed entire bacterial communities and investigated how bacterial diversity relates to traditional ecological and human health-relevant water quality indicators throughout the Milwaukee River Basin. Samples were collected from 16 sites on 5 days during the summer, including both wet and dry weather events, and were processed by 16S rRNA gene

SUBMITTER: McClary-Gutierrez JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8557911 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature