Assessing the Impact of Invasive Trapa natans on Freshwater Microbial Communities in Collins Lake, New York

Jacob Riley Mead

Trapa natans, or water chestnut, is an invasive aquatic plant that disrupts the balance of aquatic ecosystems and upsets the equilibrium of the microbial community it inhabits. This study aims to assess the impacts of water chestnuts on the microbial communities and the overall health of Collins Lake. We hypothesized that the microbial integrity would be different in both the aquatic and benthic zones beneath a water chestnut canopy. We attributed this difference to the relative lack of sunlight causing gas to accumulate and organic matter to build up. We collected 40 samples of both water and sediment from sites with and without water chestnut canopies. We then conducted analyses of sediment samples to assess microbial integrity in terms of morphotype diversity and cellular motility using the Microbial Integrity Index (MII). Based on our results, a canopy of water chestnuts influenced microbial integrity in the air-water and sediment-water interfaces by affecting cellular motility and morphotype diversity. From our studies, we concluded that a water chestnut canopy creates a localized microbial stress that disrupts the microbial equilibrium of its adjacent ecosystems.