Effect of Sewage and Industrial Effluents on Bacterial and Archaeal Communities of Creek Sediments in the Taihu Basin

Different characteristics of wastewater have different effects on the diversity and abundance of bacteria and archaea in rivers. There are many creeks around Taihu Lake, and they receive a large volume of industrial wastewater and domestic sewage, which is discharged into these creeks, and finally into Taihu Lake. The present study determined Illumina reads (16S rRNA gene amplicons) to analyze the effects of industrial wastewater and domestic sewage on the bacterial and archaeal communities at the different sampling sites along two creeks. The bacterial and archaeal diversity of the creek receiving sewage was higher than that of the creek receiving industrial waste. Proteobacteria dominated the microbial communities of all samples in both creeks. Betaproteobacteria dominated in the sewage creek, and its abundance declined along the creek. Certain pollutant-resistant classes were more abundant at the site near to the pollution source of the industry creek (e.g., Epsilonproteobacteria and Flavobacteria). Halobacteria belonging to the phylum Euryarchaeota was the dominant archaea at all sites in both creeks, while Methanobacteria was more abundant in the industry creek. The bacterial community was more affected by the distance between the sampling site and the pollutant source than the archaeal community, indicating that bacterial diversity and abundance could be a good index to distinguish domestic and industrial pollution, especially when the main pollution sources are difficult to identify.