Effects of copper and temperature on aquatic bacterial communities

• Published in: Aquatic toxicology Vol. 71; no. 4; pp. 345 - 356
• Main Authors: Boivin, Marie-Elène Y., Massieux, Boris, Breure, Anton M., van den Ende, Frank P., Greve, Gerdit D., Rutgers, Michiel, Admiraal, Wim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 04.03.2005; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Analysis of Variance; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Applied ecology; Bacterial communities; Bacterial Physiological Phenomena - drug effects; Biofilms - drug effects; Biological and medical sciences; Cluster Analysis; Community-level physiological profiling (CLPP); Copper; Copper - toxicity; Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE); Ecosystem; Ecotoxicology, biological effects of pollution; Electrophoresis; Fresh Water; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; Multivariate Analysis; Netherlands; Pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT); Temperature; Netherlands; Temperature; Pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT); Bacterial communities; Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE); Copper; Community-level physiological profiling (CLPP); Ecotoxicology; Gel electrophoresis; Tolerance; Heavy metal; Aquatic environment; Pollution; Microbial community
• ISSN: 0166-445X; 1879-1514
• DOI: 10.1016/j.aquatox.2004.12.004

The present study aimed to characterise effects of copper and temperature on bacterial communities in photosynthetic biofilms using a suit of supplementary methods: pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT), DNA profiles with denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and physiological profiles with community-level physiological profiling (CLPP). Biofilms of algae and bacteria were grown in a ditch of a Dutch polder and exposed in the laboratory to copper (3 μM and a reference) at three different temperatures (10, 14 and 20 °C). Bacterial communities sampled from the field showed heterogeneity in their physiological profiles, however the heterogeneity decreased during laboratory incubation. After 3 days laboratory incubation, the copper treated biofilms were different from the reference biofilms, as revealed by DGGE and CLPP analyses. Effects of temperature were not observed in the CLPPs, or in the DGGE profiles. PICT was observed for the bacterial communities at all temperatures. The copper-tolerance at 10 and 14 °C increased about 3 times, whereas copper-tolerance at 20 °C increased about 6 times. Temperature had an effect on the community tolerance, but not on the structure or on the physiological profile, suggesting that temperature was not a major factor causing successional changes under these laboratory conditions. In contrast, temperature had an effect on tolerance development indicating that the exposure to copper was enhanced at higher temperature.