Urban Aerobiomes are Influenced by Season, Vegetation, and Individual Site Characteristics
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2020 EcoHealth Alliance
Original Contribution
Urban Aerobiomes are Influenced by Season, Vegetation, and Individual Site Characteristics Gwynne A´. Mhuireach ,1,2,3 Hannah Wilson,2,4 and Bart R. Johnson1 1
Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Oregon, 5250 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 Biology and the Built Environment (BioBE) Center, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 3 Institute for Health in the Built Environment, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 4 Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 2
Abstract: Exposure to biodiverse environments such as forests can benefit human well-being, and evidence suggests exposure to high microbial diversity may improve mental and immune health. However, the factors that drive microbial community assembly are poorly understood, as is the relationship between exposure to these communities and human health. We characterized airborne bacterial communities in two disparate types of urban greenspace (forest and grass) in late-spring 2017 at sites previously sampled in late-summer 2015 in Eugene-Springfield, Oregon, using highthroughput metabarcode sequencing. While all sites shared a core aerobiome in late-spring consisting of plant- and soilassociated genera, forests had significantly higher diversity than grass sites (F = 12, P = 0.004). Vegetation type explained 14% of the difference between forest and grass aerobiomes, yet individual site location explained 41% of the variation. These results were similar to but amplified over those from late summer, suggesting that both aerobiome diversity and vegetation-driven effects are higher when deciduous foliage is fresher and more active, temperatures cooler, and humidity higher. Continued exploration and hypothesis-driven research will enable development of mechanistic theory describing key drivers of urban aerobiome assembly and its relationship to human health, which, in turn, will help urban designers and planners create evidence-based salutogenic cities for future generations. Keywords: Microbiome, 16S, Salutogenic, Biodiverse, One health, Urban design
INTRODUCTION
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PURPOSE
The One Health paradigm (Gibbs 2014) has gained widespread recognition for its focus on how the interconnec-
Electronic supplementary material: The online version of this article (https://doi. org/10.1007/s10393-020-01493-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Correspondence to: Gwynne A´. Mhuireach, e-mail: [email protected]
tions of human, animal, and environmental health can be harnessed to solve pressing global problems. It has also been criticized for focusing more on disease than on the environmental, social, and behavioral dimensions of health (Rabinowitz et al. 2018). In this vein, it has been suggested that the cycling of microorganisms among different biomes may be a key factor uniting human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health (van Bruggen et al. 2019; Robinson et al. 2018; Trinh et al. 2018). According to this premise, healthy and biologically di
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