Biodiversity Drives Micropollutant Biotransformation in Freshwater Phytoplankton Assemblages
- Michael A. Stravs*Michael A. Stravs*E-mail: [email protected]Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Eawag, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dübendorf, SwitzerlandInstitute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, ETH Zürich, Universitätstrasse 16, 8092 Zürich, SwitzerlandMore by Michael A. Stravs,
- Francesco PomatiFrancesco PomatiSwiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Eawag, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dübendorf, SwitzerlandInstitute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Universitätstrasse 16, 8092 Zürich, SwitzerlandMore by Francesco Pomati, and
- Juliane Hollender*Juliane Hollender*E-mail: [email protected]Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Eawag, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dübendorf, SwitzerlandInstitute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, ETH Zürich, Universitätstrasse 16, 8092 Zürich, SwitzerlandMore by Juliane Hollender
Abstract

Biotransformation of chemical pollutants is an ecological process requiring multifunctionality (multiple metabolic pathways) and, potentially, high biodiversity. Phytoplankton communities are highly diverse functionally and taxonomically and co-occur with complex mixtures of organic pollutants in aquatic environments. Here, we investigated how phytoplankton species richness (SR) and class richness (CR) determine the biotransformation of a mixture of 37 structurally diverse pollutants using laboratory experiments and analysis of high-resolution mass spectrometry data. Laboratory phytoplankton communities were assembled from pure cultures by creating a gradient from one to five taxonomic groups, and 5 to 11 total species, in defined medium. The biotransformation of pollutants over 6 days and the total number of transformed chemicals increased with CR for 13 considerably transformed compounds. The total number of transformation products (TPs, up to 42) was positively affected by both CR and SR: CR had a positive effect on stable TPs found, and SR led to more transient TPs. Our data indicate that both taxonomic and functional diversity are important for biotransformation of anthropogenic chemicals in phytoplankton and suggest that plankton biodiversity could play a role in the remediation of pollutant loads in aquatic ecosystems.
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- Jan Stanstrup, Corey Broeckling, Rick Helmus, Nils Hoffmann, Ewy Mathé, Thomas Naake, Luca Nicolotti, Kristian Peters, Johannes Rainer, Reza Salek, Tobias Schulze, Emma Schymanski, Michael Stravs, Etienne Thévenot, Hendrik Treutler, Ralf Weber, Egon Willighagen, Michael Witting, Steffen Neumann. The metaRbolomics Toolbox in Bioconductor and beyond. Metabolites 2019, 9 (10) , 200. https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo9100200




