Microbial community and molecular ecological network in the EGSB reactor treating antibiotic wastewater: Response to environmental factors

In this study, one lab-scale EGSB reactor (1.47 L volume) was designed to treat the antibiotic wastewater under different environmental factors, including the addition of cephalexin (CFX), Temperature (T) and Hydraulic Retention Time (HRT). The microbial community structure in EGSB reactor was analyzed with high-throughput sequencing technology to investigate their response to environmental factors changes, and then the random-matrix-theory (RMT)-based network analysis was used to investigate the microbial community’s molecular ecological network in EGSB systems treating antibiotics wastewater. Moreover, the explanatory value of each environmental factor on the change of microbial community structure was obtained through the result of redundancy analysis (RDA). The results showed that the addition of cephalexin (CFX), decline of T and decline of HRT (8 h) would decrease the removal efficiency of COD decreasing. And the removal efficiency of CFX would not be affected by decline of T and HRT, except the producing and degrading process of CFX by-products was changed obviously. The result of RDA analysis suggested the environmental factors mainly affected bacterial and fungal microbial community structure but not archaeal ones. The result of high-throughput sequencing showed the relative abundance (RA) of Firmicutes had been obviously affected by T and HRT, which might be main reason leading to the decrease of COD removal efficiency. In addition, molecular ecological network analysis showed the growth of Bacteroidetes occupied the niche of functional microorganism and led to the unstable operation of EGSB when T declined. What’s more, the molecular ecological network analysis revealed that Exophiala which belonged to fungi Ascomycota phylum was the hub genus to degrade complex refractory organic pollutants, and Aceticlastic methanogens Methanosaeta was the core functional archaea genus. •The interaction among bacteria, archaea and fungal communities was explored.•The growth of Bacteroidetes was disadvantage to the stable operation of EGSB reactor.•Exophiala was the hub genus to degrade complex refractory organic pollutants.•Aceticlastic methanogens Methanosaeta was the core functional archaea genus.