Pollution-induced community tolerance of soil microbial communities caused by the antibiotic sulfachloropyridazine

Little is known about the environmental hazards linked to the treatment of farm animals with antibiotics and subsequent spreading of manure, especially regarding soil microbial communities. In this investigation, pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT) of bacteria from soils artificially spiked with the sulfonamide sulfachloropyridazine (SCP) was investigated. Tolerance of the bacterial communities after 3 weeks' exposure to SCP was determined by analyzing the sensitivity of 31 microbial metabolic processes in microtiter plates. Bacterial suspensions extracted from soils containing higher concentrations of SCP showed an increased tolerance of their metabolic activities to this antibiotic. An increase in tolerance by 10% was found at 7.3 mg/kg dw SCP. The PICT effect could be demonstrated by both a shift in the tolerance of the average of all metabolic activities and a shift of the physiological process sensitivity distributions made up from the single metabolic processes. The PICT effect was accompanied by smaller changes in the community-level physiological profile (CLPP). To conclude, PICT has been shown to be a versatile and illustrative method for the detection of the effects of antibacterial agents on soil microorganisms.