Investigating Escherichia coli habitat transition from sediments to water in tropical urban lakes
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2024
Abstract
Background. Escherichia coli is a commonly used faecal indicator bacterium to assess the level of faecal contamination in aquatic habitats. However, extensive studies have reported that sediment acts as a natural reservoir of E. coli in the extraintestinal environment. E. coli can be released from the sediment, and this may lead to overestimating the level of faecal contamination during water quality surveillance. Thus, we aimed to investigate the effects of E. coli habitat transition from sediment to water on its abundance in the water column. Methods. This study enumerated the abundance of E. coli in the water and sediment at five urban lakes in the Kuala Lumpur-Petaling Jaya area, state of Selangor, Malaysia. We developed a novel method for measuring habitat transition rate of sediment E. coli to the water column, and evaluated the effects of habitat transition on E. coli abundance in the water column after accounting for its decay in the water column. Results. The abundance of E. coli in the sediment ranged from below detection to 12,000 cfu g–1, and was about one order higher than in the water column (1 to 2,300 cfu mL–1). The habitat transition rates ranged from 0.03 to 0.41 h–1. In contrast, the E. coli decay rates ranged from 0.02 to 0.16 h−1. In most cases (>80), the habitat transition rates were higher than the decay rates in our study. Discussion. Our study provided a possible explanation for the persistence of E. coli in tropical lakes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quantitative study on habitat transition of E. coli from sediments to water column. Copyright 2024 Liu et al.
Keywords
Decay rate, Escherichia coli, Faecal indicator bacteria, Habitat transition, Sediment
Divisions
InstituteofBiologicalSciences
Funders
National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant no. 41961144022],Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia [Grant no. MOHE-HiCoE IOES-2023C]
Publication Title
PeerJ
Volume
12
Publisher
PeerJ