Table 1.
Sample details of dust specimens collected during five time points during three seasons from two sites in Kuwait.
Sampling performed through high stage cascade impactor.
Fig 1.
Taxonomic distribution of microbial populations associated with dust aerosols in Kuwait, (a) Bacterial; (b) Fungal. A differential heat tree was plotted to depict the commonly abundant taxa in terms of relative abundance. The nodes in red highlight the constantly detected genera, families, orders, classes and phyla.
Table 2.
Predominant fungal species of dust associated microbiome of Kuwait.
Fig 2.
Spatial variations at various taxonomic levels presented on a differential heat tree (a) Bacterial and (b) Fungal communities. Only the significantly different taxonomic ranks are shown on the tree. (dark shade-remote population; light shade-urban communities).
Fig 3.
Alpha diversity plots of (a) Bacterial and (b) Fungal communities. Students T-test was employed for comparisons when the experimental factor was sample collection site. Observed alpha diversity estimates are based on unique taxa richness or counts in each sample; Chao1 and ACE diversities are based on low abundance taxa richness; Shannon, Simpson and Fisher estimates are based on both taxa evenness (distribution) as well as richness.
Fig 4.
Beta diversity clustering based on PCoA on the Bray Curtis distances of (a) bacterial genus and (b) fungal genus distributed between two locations in Kuwait. The two colours represent the two sites Abdally/remote and Kuwait city/urban.
Fig 5.
Bar plots representing the seasonal variations in relative abundances of predominant genus of (a) Bacteria and (b) Fungi. The taxa above 100 OTU counts are represented on the plots. The rest are binned together as others.
Fig 6.
LDA analysis based on non-parametric factorial Kruskal-Wallis (KW) sum-rank test of bacterial genus among three seasons (p & q ≤ 0.05).
The heat map on the right side of the figure explains the abundance of the genera in three different seasons depicted by the three colours. Blue (low abundance), beige (median abundance) and red (high abundance).
Fig 7.
Season wise alpha diversity plots of (a) bacterial and (b) fungal communities. All comparisons were made through analysis of variance (ANOVA). Observed alpha diversity estimates are based on unique taxon richness or counts in each sample; Chao1 and ACE diversities are based on low abundance taxon richness; Shannon, Simpson and Fisher estimates are based on both taxon evenness (distribution) as well as richness.
Fig 8.
Beta diversity clustering based on PCoA on the Bray Curtis distances of (a) bacterial and (b) fungal genus distributed during the three seasons in Kuwait. The colours represent the three seasons blue (autumn); red (summer); green (spring).
Fig 9.
Relative abundance of (a) bacterial and (b) fungal genus associated with different size fractions of dust at the remote and urban sites. Bacterial genera were only found in the respirable fractions (stage 1–5). Fungal genera were detected both in respirable (stage 1–5) as well as in the inhalable (stage 7) size fraction of dust.
Fig 10.
Fungal species associated with the inhalable size fractions of the dust at the (a) remote and (b) urban sites. Relative abundances were recorded to be higher at the remote location as compared to the urban place.
Fig 11.
Correlation analysis of inhalable (a) A7-010718 and (b) K7-040418 fractions with their respirable counterparts. The top twenty five fungal genera with significant correlations coefficients are represented in the bar plots. 1 corresponds to inhalable whereas 2 corresponds to the respirable fractions.