How the bacterial community of a tannery effluent responds to bioaugmentation with the consortium SFC 500-1. Impact of environmental variables

Bioaugmentation with the consortium SFC 500-1 is a promising alternative to remediate wastewaters, such as tannery effluents. With the aim of assessing the changes produced in response to bioaugmentation, bacterial 16S rDNA genes were sequenced with Illumina MiSeq Platform. Additionally, bacterial and fungal groups were analyzed through standard culture dependent methods. The impact of diverse physico-chemical and microbiological parameters on the prokaryotic diversity was also evaluated throughout. Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria, represented together up to 91% of the total number of sequences obtained from the tannery effluent. Diversity decreased immediately after inoculation, due to an increase in the representation of the taxa to which the added consortium belongs. However, bioaugmentation produced no greater variations since only a 10% of unique operational taxonomic units were found in the inoculated treatment. An increase in the abundance of Myroides and a reduction in the representation of Proteiniclasticum and Halomonas were major observed variations. On the other hand, pH and dissolved oxygen constituted main environmental factors affecting the structure of the prokaryotic communities. In all treatments yeasts increased over time, to the detriment of filamentous fungi. Together, data from this report may contribute to the development of improved bioremediation strategies of industrial wastewaters. [Display omitted] •Bioaugmentation effects on the native communities were evaluated.•Culture-dependent and independent approaches were used to analyze the bacterial communities.•Bioaugmentation produced changes in the abundance of Myroides, Proteiniclasticum and Halomonas.•Consortium SFC 500-1 bioaugmentation could be a safe procedure for tannery effluents treatment.