Widespread occurrence of fecal indicator bacteria in oligotrophic tropical streams. Are common culture-based coliform tests appropriate?

Monitoring of stream water quality is a key element of water resource management worldwide, but methods that are commonly used in temperate habitats may not be appropriate in humid tropical systems. We assessed the influence of four land uses on microbial water quality in 21 streams in the Panama Ca...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PeerJ (San Francisco, CA) CA), 2024-09, Vol.12, p.e18007, Article e18007
Main Authors: Chavarria, Karina, Batista, Jorge, Saltonstall, Kristin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
16S metabarcoding
Bacteria
Beef cattle
Colilert
Culture-based indicator bacteria
Enterobacteriaceae - genetics
Enterobacteriaceae - isolation & purification
Environmental Impacts
Environmental Monitoring - methods
Escherichia coli
Escherichia coli - isolation & purification
Feces - microbiology
Freshwater Biology
Management
Microbiology
Molecular Biology
Natural Resource Management
Natural resources
Oligotrophic streams
Rivers - microbiology
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S - genetics
Tropical Climate
Tropical watersheds
United States
Veterinary supplies industry
Water
Water Microbiology
Water Quality
Water quality monitoring
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Monitoring of stream water quality is a key element of water resource management worldwide, but methods that are commonly used in temperate habitats may not be appropriate in humid tropical systems. We assessed the influence of four land uses on microbial water quality in 21 streams in the Panama Canal Watershed over a one-year period, using a common culture-based fecal indicator test and 16S rDNA metabarcoding. Each stream was located within one of four land uses: mature forest, secondary forest, silvopasture, and traditional cattle pasture. Culturing detected total coliforms and across all sites but found no significant differences in concentrations between land uses. However, 16S rDNA metabarcoding revealed variability in the abundance of coliforms across land uses and several genera that can cause false positives in culture-based tests. Our results indicate that culture-based fecal indicator bacteria tests targeting coliforms may be poor indicators of fecal contamination in Neotropical oligotrophic streams and suggest that tests targeting members of the Bacteroidales would provide a more reliable indication of fecal contamination.
ISSN:2167-8359
2167-8359
DOI:10.7717/peerj.18007