Fungal Diversity in Two Wastewater Treatment Plants in North Italy

In urban wastewater treatment plants, bacteria lead the biological component of the depuration process, but the microbial community is also rich in fungi (mainly molds, yeasts and pseudo-yeasts), whose taxonomical diversity and relative frequency depend on several factors, e.g., quality of wastewater input, climate, seasonality, and depuration stage. By joining morphological and molecular identification, we investigated the fungal diversity in two different plants for the urban wastewater treatment in the suburbs of the two major cities in Lombardia, the core of industrial and commercial activities in Italy. This study presents a comparison of the fungal diversity across the depuration stages by applying the concepts of α-, β- and ζ-diversity. Eurotiales (mainly with <i>Aspergillus</i> and <i>Penicillium</i>), Trichosporonales (<i>Trichosporon sensu lato</i>), Saccharomycetales (mainly with <i>Geotrichum</i>) and Hypocreales (mainly with <i>Fusarium</i> and <i>Trichoderma</i>) are the most represented fungal orders and genera in all the stages and both the plants. The two plants show different trends in α-, β- and ζ-diversity, despite the fact that they all share a crash during the secondary sedimentation and turnover across the depuration stages. This study provides an insight on which taxa potentially contribute to each depuration stage and/or keep viable propagules in sludges after the collection from the external environment.