Morphological characteristics of bioaerosols from contrasting locations in southern tropical India – A case study

Abstract

Bioaerosols, which are ubiquitous in the earth's atmosphere, are poorly characterized in terms of their physical and chemical properties. Improved knowledge of their physical and chemical properties is essential to have a better understanding of their dispersion and long-range transport in the atmosphere and at the same time to assess their role as potential Ice Nuclei (IN). In the present work, possibly for the first time we report the morphological characteristics of bioaerosols from marine urban and high altitude continental regions in Southern India. The samples were collected using polycarbonate filter paper and analyzed using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) coupled with Energy-dispersive Spectra Detector (EDX/EDS). The observed bioaerosols exhibited great variability in their morphological features over this region of the world. At these contrasting environments, we found that fungal spores constituted the major fraction of the total observed bioaerosols. Pollen grains, plant and insect fragments, and lot of other non-identified bio-particles were also observed constituting the remaining fraction. Further, the classification of fungal spores exhibited strong variability over this region. For example, fungal spores of both Ascomycota and Basidiomycota class were seen in abundance in marine environment, while Ascomycota especially Cladosporium were seen in abundance in high altitude continental environment. Our findings also suggest that increase in diversity of bioaerosol particles at marine site appeared to coincide with precipitation. It appears that vast diversity in the morphological features of bioaerosols exists over this region, which should further be studied using advanced online techniques for better quantification under contrasting environments. However, the diversity observed in morphological characteristics of bioaerosols at these two contrasting locations is limited and restricted to these two sites and season of the year, and should therefore not be generalized over a large spatio-temporal scale; emphasizing the need for more similar studies covering larger geographical area.