“In most cities, streets are designed for collecting and
transporting dirt, litter, debris, storm water and other wastes as a municipal
sanitation system. Microbial mats can develop on street surfaces and form
microbial communities that have never been described. Here, we performed the
first molecular inventory of the street gutter-associated eukaryotes across the
entire French capital of Paris and the non-potable waters sources. We found
that the 5782 OTUs (operational taxonomic units) present in the street gutters
which are dominated by diatoms (photoautotrophs), fungi (heterotrophs), Alveolata
and Rhizaria, includes parasites, consumers of phototrophs and epibionts that
may regulate the dynamics of gutter mat microbial communities. Network analyses
demonstrated that street microbiome present many species restricted to gutters,
and an overlapping composition between the water sources used for street
cleaning (for example, intra-urban aquatic networks and the associated rivers)
and the gutters. We propose that street gutters, which can cover a significant
surface area of cities worldwide, potentially have important ecological roles
in the remediation of pollutants or downstream wastewater treatments, might
also be a niche for growth and dissemination of putative parasite and
pathogens.”
From: Aquatic urban ecology at the scale of a capital: community structure and interactions in street gutters
by Vincent Hervé, Boris Leroy, Albert Da Silva Pires & Pascal Jean Lopez
The ISME Journal
doi:10.1038/ismej.2017.166
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