Ecological impacts of sea-crossing bridge construction on local sediment microbiome in East China

Abstract

With the increasing global human activities, local microbial communities will be dramatically changed and impaired. Sea-crossing bridges have been constructed worldwide with the rapid economic development. However, knowledge about impacts of bridge constructions on diversity and functional shifts of local microbiota is lacking. In the present study, high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics were implemented to compare changes of microbial communities between sediments influenced by sea-crossing bridge construction (EG group) and the surrounding control sediments (CG group). High levels of beta diversity in EG group indicated environmental changes and bridge construction increased local microbial diversity. Comparative analyses revealed significant changes in microbial composition and abundance and a total of 17 indicator species were detected using LEfSe approach. The predicted functional attributes of microbiota revealed most of which were involved in metabolism, environmental and genetic information processing. Notably, annotated pathways involved in human diseases were significantly enriched in EG group, revealing potential deleterious effects of public health security influenced by bridge construction. For the first time, our study revealed significant changes in local microbial communities affected by sea-crossing bridge construction. We suggested local biodiversity and human health should be specifically noticed in engineering construction process. These results may greatly enhance our understanding of the microbial responses to marine infrastructure and civil engineering.