Presentation description

Wastewater surveillance is a valuable and frequently utilized tool in microbial ecology. It has a long history of use in epidemiology. The bacteria living in wastewater form ecological communities, and these communities interact with a variety of other organisms, including predators. Predators are involved in regulating the population of these bacteria, and it is therefore of value to study them in the effort to understand the ecology of wastewater.

Antibiotics are a relatively recent advancement, and along with vaccines, constitute perhaps the greatest advancement in the history of infectious disease. They are credited with a 23-year increase in human lifespan and have immeasurably improved countless lives. One of the greatest problems facing modern medicine is the development of antimicrobial resistance. This reduces the efficacy of antibiotics, leaving us more vulnerable to infectious disease than we have been in over a century and threatening to destroy the considerable gains we have made.

This survey, as a preliminary measure, provides only initial information on this matter, but has revealed predators in the wastewater of the University of Utah. The most frequent findings in this survey were flocs and filaments of bacteria, present in all and all but one respectively of the samples. The least common finding was flagellates, present in one sample, while amoebaform findings were present in half of samples and nematodous findings were present in two thirds of samples. The visualized predators, as part of the ecological community in this wastewater, are part of the puzzle of bacterial survival, including antibiotic resistance. There is potential that greater understanding of predation in wastewater may allow for the development of strategies to regulate bacterial communities, and that these strategies may be helpful in the understanding of antimicrobial resistance. Combined with the knowledge that this wastewater has a high incidence of antibiotic resistance, it is to be hoped that this inquiry may provide a framework for future investigation.