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The effect of combined pollution by PAHs and heavy metals on the topsoil microbial communities of Spolic Technosols of the lake Atamanskoe, Southern Russia

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Abstract

The contamination with organic and inorganic pollutants changes significantly soil microbial community structure. These shifts indicate anthropogenic pressure and help to discover new possibilities for soil remediation. In this study, the microbial community structure of Spolic Technosols formed at the territory of a former industrial sludge reservoir near the Kamensk-Shakhtinsky (Southern Russia) was studied using a metagenomics approach. The studied soils contain high concentrations of heavy metals (HM) (up to 72,900 mg kg−1) and 16 priority polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (up to 6670 mg kg−1). Its microbial communities demonstrate an excellent adaptability level reflected in their complexity and diversity. As shown by the high values of alpha diversity indices (Shannon values up to 10.1, Chao1 values from 1430 to 4273), instead of decreasing quantitatively and qualitatively on the systemic level, microbial communities tend to undergo complex redistribution. Regardless of contamination level, the share of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria was consistently high and varied from 20 to 50%. Following the results of the Mann–Whitney U test, there were significant changes of less abundant phyla. The abundance of oligotrophic bacteria from Gemmatimonadetes and Verrucomicrobia phyla and autotrophic bacteria (e.g., Nitrospira) decreased due to the high PAH’s level. And abundance of Firmicutes and amoebae-associated bacteria such as TM6 and soil Chlamydia increased in highly contaminated plots. In the Spolic Technosols studied, the influence of factors on the microbial community composition decreased from PAHs concentration to soil characteristics (organic carbon content) and phylum–phylum interactions. The high concentrations of HMs influenced weakly on the microbial community composition.

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Acknowledgements

The present research was funded by the Russian Science Foundation through Project No. 19-74-10046. We thank the centers for collective use of Southern Federal University "Modern Microscopy" and "High Technology" for performing chemical-analytical experiments and center for collective use of Kazan Federal University "Interdisciplinary Center of Shared Facilities" for performing metagenomics analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation, 344090

    Andrey Gorovtsov, Konstantin Demin, Svetlana Sushkova, Tatiana Minkina, Tamara Dudnikova, Andrey Barbashev & Vishnu Rajput

  2. Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russian Federation, 420008

    Tatiana Grigoryeva, Valeria Romanova & Alexander Laikov

  3. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119991

    Ivan Semenkov

  4. Federal Research Center “Pushchino Scientific Center for Biological Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, Pushchino, Moscow region, Russian Federation, 142290

    Yulia Kocharovskaya

  5. The Federal State Budget Educational Institution of Higher Education, Pushchino State Institute of Natural Science, Pushchino, Moscow region, Russian Federation, 142290

    Yulia Kocharovskaya

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  1. Andrey Gorovtsov
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  2. Konstantin Demin
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Contributions

AG contributed to conceptualization, formulation of a research problem, and writing. KD contributed to data processing, methodology, discussion, and writing. TM contributed to data curation and writing—reviewing. SS contributed to writing, analytical work, HPLC, and data performing. TG conducted experiments. TD contributed to visualization and statistical processing, and methodology. AB conducted experiments and contributed to data creating and experiments design. IS contributed to writing—review and editing. VR contributed to bioinformatics, experiment design, writing—review, and editing. AL contributed to DNA extraction and bioinformatics. VR contributed to data processing. YK contributed to writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Svetlana Sushkova.

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Gorovtsov, A., Demin, K., Sushkova, S. et al. The effect of combined pollution by PAHs and heavy metals on the topsoil microbial communities of Spolic Technosols of the lake Atamanskoe, Southern Russia. Environ Geochem Health 44, 1299–1315 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-01059-x

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