Effects of Physicochemical Properties on the South-South Estuaries’ Microbial Community Structure

Abstract

The conceivably chemical gold of the marine environment is affected by a myriad of natural and artificial challenges. The physical and chemical challenges faced by microbes in the ocean are one among the many myriads of activities that affect marine microbial life. As the depth of the ocean increases, temperature declines, salinity increases, and the availability of nutrients dwindle, pollution from a variety of sources such as recreation, fish culture, and the assimilation and transport of pollution effluents through river can greatly affect the physiochemical and biodiversity of the ocean life. The total community DNA was extracted using the ZR soil microbe DNA Miniprep kit. The amplicon Library was prepared using the reversible terminator sequencing on Miseq, illumina’s integrated next-generation sequencer by Inqaba Biotechnological as per 16S metagenomic sequencing Library preparation. For the determination of pH, the pH meter was used; the conductivity meter was used for conductivity; the salinometer was used for salinity, the heating method was used for total dissolved solids (TDS); Nephelometer was used for turbidity; the filter method was used for total suspended solids (TSS); palintest Nitratest method was used for Nitrate determination; Total alkalinity was determined by the standard titrimetric method; for Total hardness, the EDTA titrimetric method was used; the wet ashing method was used for metals; Hydrogen carbonate was determined by titrimetric method; sulfate and Chloride were determined by turbidimetric and argentometric method respectively. The total read counts from the kingdom across the three zones are 4981 (82.70%), 991 (94.11%), and 45835 (46.64%) for Okrika, Ibaka, and Brass, respectively. The total read counts from the phyla across the three zones are 1222 (21.73%) for Proteobacteria, 221 (21.33%) for Firmicutes, and 14712 (14.97%) for Firmicutes, respectively. The salinity and sodium values were 2.96 and 3.23 and 567.31 and 422.91 for the top and bottom, respectively, in Ibaka. The salinity and sodium values were 13.55 and 12.94 and 1877.68 and 1874.02 for top and bottom, respectively, for Okrika. The salinity and sodium values were 11.65 and 8.51 and 1238.69 and 1338.82 for the top and bottom, respectively, for Brass. The number of bacteria phyla obtained from the sediment was found to depend on the physicochemical parameters (sodium, salinity, pH, etc.).