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Impact assessment of bioaugmented tannery effluent discharge on the microbiota of water bodies

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Abstract

Effluents are commonly discharged into water bodies, and in order for the process to be as environmentally sound as possible, the potential effects on native water communities must be assessed alongside the quality parameters of the effluents themselves. In the present work, changes in the bacterial diversity of streamwater receiving a tannery effluent were monitored by high-throughput MiSeq sequencing. Physico-chemical and microbiological parameters and acute toxicity were also evaluated through different bioassays. After the discharge of treated effluents that had been either naturally attenuated or bioaugmented, bacterial diversity decreased immediately in the streamwater samples, as evidenced by the over-representation of taxa such as Brachymonas, Arcobacter, Marinobacterium, Myroides, Paludibacter and Acinetobacter, typically found in tannery effluents. However, there were no remarkable changes in diversity over time (after 1 day). In terms of the physico-chemical and microbiological parameters analyzed, chemical oxygen demand and total bacterial count increased in response to discharge of the treated effluents. No lethal effects were observed in Lactuca sativa L. seeds or Rhinella arenarum embryos exposed to the streamwater that had received the treated effluents. All of these results contribute to the growing knowledge about the environmental safety of effluent discharge procedures.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Jorge Angelini (FCEFQyN, Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto) and Dr. Daniel Kurth (PROIMI, Tucumán) for technical assistance during DNA extraction from complex matrices and in the bioinformatic analysis, respectively. This work was carried out with financial support from PICT (FONCyT) and CONICET. M.F. is a fellowship member of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) whereas P.P.P., E.A., and P.S.G. are members of the CONICET Research Career (Argentina).

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Fernandez, M., Pereira, P.P., Agostini, E. et al. Impact assessment of bioaugmented tannery effluent discharge on the microbiota of water bodies. Ecotoxicology 29, 973–986 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-020-02237-w

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