Airborne bacteria in show caves from Southern Spain

Authors:

Irene Dominguez-Moñino1, Valme Jurado1, Miguel Angel Rogerio-Candelera1, Bernardo Hermosin1 and Cesareo Saiz-Jimenez1

doi: 10.15698/mic2021.10.762
Volume 8, pp. 247 to 255, published 26/07/2021.

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Affiliations:

1 Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiologia, IRNAS-CSIC, 41012 Sevilla, Spain.

Keywords: 

aerobiology, airborne bacteria, phototrophic biofilms, Bacillus, Arthrobacter, Micrococcus.

Corresponding Author(s):

Cesareo Saiz-Jimenez, Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiologia, IRNAS-CSIC, 41012 Sevilla, Spain; saiz@irnase.csic.es

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Please cite this article as:

Irene Dominguez-Moñino, Valme Jurado, Miguel Angel Rogerio-Candelera, Bernardo Hermosin and Cesareo Saiz-Jimenez (2021). Airborne bacteria in show caves from Southern Spain. Microbial Cell 8(10): 247-255. doi: 10.15698/mic2021.10.762

© 2021 Dominguez-Moñino et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) li-cense, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

This work presents a study on the airborne bacteria recorded in three Andalusian show caves, subjected to different managements. The main differences within the caves were the absence of lighting and phototrophic biofilms in Cueva de Ardales, the periodic maintenance and low occurrence of phototrophic biofilms in Gruta de las Maravillas, and the abundance of phototrophic biofilms in speleothems and walls in Cueva del Tesoro. These factors conditioned the diversity of bacteria in the caves and therefore there are large differences among the CFU m-3, determined using a suction impact collector, equipment widely used in aerobiological studies. The study of the bacterial diversity, inside and outside the caves, indicates that the air is mostly populated by bacteria thriving in the subterranean environment. In addition, the diversity seems to be related with the presence of abundant phototrophic biofilms, but not with the number of visitors received by each cave.