Transition of an estuarine benthic meiofauna assemblage 1.7 and 2.8 years after a mining disaster

Estuaries are transitional coastal ecosystems that are threatened by multiple sources of human pollution. In 2015, mining tailings from an upstream dam failure caused massive metal contamination that impacted benthic assemblages on the Brazilian Rio Doce estuary. In this study, we investigate and co...

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Published in:PeerJ (San Francisco, CA) CA), 2023-03, Vol.11, p.e14992-e14992, Article e14992
Main Authors: Coppo, Gabriel, Pais, Fabiano S, Ferreira, Tiago O, Halanych, Ken M, Donnelly, Kyle, Mazzuco, Ana Carolina, Bernardino, Angelo F
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Benthos
Biological diversity
Disasters
Ecology
Ecosystem
Environmental DNA
Environmental Impact
Environmental Impacts
Environmental Monitoring
Estuaries
Estuarine ecology
Estuary
Freshwater Biology
Genetics
Genomics
Geologic Sediments - chemistry
Humans
Marine biology
Metals
Mine accidents
Mineral industry
Mining
Mining industry
Phylogeny
Pollution
Rio Doce
Sediments (Geology)
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Summary:Estuaries are transitional coastal ecosystems that are threatened by multiple sources of human pollution. In 2015, mining tailings from an upstream dam failure caused massive metal contamination that impacted benthic assemblages on the Brazilian Rio Doce estuary. In this study, we investigate and compare meiofaunal assemblages with eDNA metabarcoding 1.7 years (2017) and 2.8 years (2018) after the initial contamination by mine tailings in order to evaluate the continued impact of sediment mine tailing contaminants on the structure of benthic assemblages after the disaster. The community was dominated by Arthropoda and Nematoda 1.7 yr after the impacts (42 and 29% of meiofaunal sequence reads, respectively) but after 2.8 years Arthropoda (64.8% of meiofaunal sequence reads) and Rotifera (11.8%) were the most common taxa. This continued impact on meiofaunal assemblage revealed a lower phylogenetic diversity (7.8-fold) in 2018, despite overall decrease in metal concentration (Al, Ba, Cr, As, Fe, Zn, Mn, Pb, Cd, Co) in sediments. Our data suggests that differences in benthic assemblages and loss of diversity may be influenced by contaminants in sediments of this estuary, and indicate that broad eDNA assessments are greatly useful to understand the full range of biodiversity changes in dynamic estuarine ecosystems.
ISSN:2167-8359
2167-8359
DOI:10.7717/peerj.14992