Seguimiento del impacto antropogénico en aguas costeras mediante análisis de comunidades bacterianas

B. NOGALES; MªM. AGUILÓ-FERRETJANS; M.P. LANFRANCONI; J.M. PIÑA-VILLALONGA; C. MARTÍN-CARDONA; R. BOSCH

Granada (ESPAÑA)

Congreso; 4th International Meeting on Biotechnology BIOTEC2008; 2008

Coastal areas suffer from strong environmental pressure due to human activities. Our aim was to analyse bacterial communities in order to determine the effect of coastal use, and in particular that of hydrocarbon pollution. Several recreational coastal areas (marinas and adjacent beaches) in Mallorca Island were sampled. Bacterial diversity was analysed by molecular methods. Bacterial communities in areas receiving impact had particular features with respect to diversity, structure, composition and temporal variability. In areas intensively used for certain periods (i.e. beaches) bacterial composition reflected well the effect of coastal use. In all samples we observed a predominance of particular bacterial groups. Therefore we identified populations which are characteristic of water samples with different impact level, and that might be used as indicators of disturbance. On the other hand we showed that the integration of diversity and geographic data could help in determining spatial scale of the impact. The results on diversity in environmental samples have been complemented with experiments of artificial pollution in the laboratory. These experiments have evidenced very rapid changes in diversity after pollution, as well as in the expression of important genes for the functioning of the community.