Microbial Composition Comparison of Bioaerosol Samples with Two Co-located Bioaerosol Samplers: Condensation Growth Tube Collector and Electret Filters

MARINA NIETO-CABALLERO, Claudia Mignani, Thomas C. J. Hill, Kristen Otto, Jessica Metcalf, Paul DeMott, Mark Hernandez, Sonia Kreidenweis, Colorado State University

     Abstract Number: 676
     Working Group: Bioaerosols

Abstract
Bioaerosol samplers are known to impart damage upon collection of bioaerosols. However, the bias in microbial community composition imparted by the different samplers remains unknown. For this reason, two samplers with significantly different sampling techniques (i.e., condensation growth tube collection or CGTC (BioSpot-VIVAS, Handix Scientific) and electret filtration (SASS3100, Research International)) were selected for microbial composition comparisons. Although alpha diversity metrics showed no significant differences between the samples collected with the two co-located samplers, microbial community composition (16S rRNA gene) was significantly different (p-value < 0.05) between the two collection methods. Despite differences in microbial community composition obtained by the two sampling methods, both captured changes in microbial community composition based on environmental factors (such as day and night sampling; p-value < 0.05). Here, we present results from these comparisons along with similar comparisons and findings from fungal data (ITS1 region). The findings of this study will help illuminate how instrumentation used in aerobiome studies can bias the reported results, usually due to microbial damage, and different collection efficiencies for sampler types for different bioaerosol size ranges, among others.