Wastewater discharges alter microbial community composition in surface waters of the Canadian prairies

Freshwater ecosystems occupy only a small portion of the Earth's surface, but harbor a disproportionate amount of biodiversity that is particularly threatened by wastewater discharges, as one of the most common anthropogenic impact on these systems. As wastewater effluents are also sources of antimicrobial agents and other microorganisms, they reflect a particular threat to natural microbial communities within receiving rivers. Our knowledge about the impact of wastewater effluents on these communities is, however, largely unexplored. In this study, composition of microbial communities upstream and downstream of 5 different wastewater treatment plants within Southern Saskatchewan, Canada were examined. Three matrices, the water column, sediments, and biofilms attached to hard surfaces, were analyzed. The samples were extracted for DNA and were PCR amplified targeting the hypervariable V3-V4 region of the 16S ribosomal RNA subunit I gene of prokaryotes, as well as the hypervariable V3 region of the 18S ribosomal RNA gene of eukaryotic organisms. Amplicons were sequenced performing a 600-cycle paired-end sequencing run on an Illumina® MiSeq sequencer. This dataset includes the demultiplexed sequencing output, the feature table with taxonomic annotation, and the sample metadata.

Esser, M. , Hoggarth, C. , Baulch, H. , Challis, J. , Xie, Y. , Giesy, J. , Hecker, M. , Brinkmann, M. (2022) Wastewater discharges alter microbial community composition in surface waters of the Canadian prairies. Federated Research Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.20383/103.0616

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