Microbial Community Structure Along The Riverine And Estuarine Stretches Of The River Ganga And Its Bioremediation Potential

Abstract

The river Ganga is the lifeblood of Indian subcontinent. The study of lifeforms in the newlineriver Ganga tells the history of different landscape patterns in Indian subcontinent and newlinealso foretells its potential to support life in coming days. Water (as Ganga jal) in the river newlineGanga is not merely water, their tenets come from more than quality and quantity of newlineliquid water. The river Ganga from its origin in western Himalayas at 2,704 km newline(1,680 mi) above sea level to the confluence in Bay of Bengal pass through multiple newlinegeomorphic conditions, embrace different connectivity (both nonlinearity and linearity) and newlineintricacy. Alarmingly increasing human population, large scale unplanned or partially newlineurbanization, and industrial and domestic use along its banks have resulted in heavy newlineexploitation through dams, weirs, canals, and urban and rural, domestic and industrial newlinewaste discharge. The integration of all the changes hydrological, geospatial and newlineanthropogenic by the lotic ecosystems produce heterogeneity at spatial scale and newlineevolution of differential life history strategies by different riverine organisms results in newlineheterogeneity at temporal scale. For example, increased spatial heterogeneity of bacterial newlineproduction precedes dominance of bacterivorous zooplankton and ciliates, and higher newlineprimary production is succeeded by temporal regime shifts towards herbivorous newlinecladocerans and calanoid copepods. Because of shorter generation time and planktonic newlinelife style, diverse feeding mode and higher adaptability, microbial plankton (both newlineprokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes, including meso-zooplankton) shows rapid newlineresponses to multiple environmental changes and diverse anthropogenic pressures. Such newlineresponses undermine the community structure prediction by the river continuum newlinehypothesis across the stretches, cause differential patterns of heterogeneity in