Effects of seasonal variation, including entirely different pollutant concentrations and temperature, on microbial community structures in a municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) with anaerobic/anoxic/oxic (A2/O) system have been evaluated through high-throughput sequencing technique. Venn diagrams and bacterial diversity indices indicated significantly decreased biodiversity in winter. However, microbial community structure analysis showed high consistency among different A2/O chambers in summer or winter, while nearly all the dominant bacteria in summer changed in winter. Moreover, decreased ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (0.7% in summer and 0.3% in winter) coupled with low temperature fitted with the lower ammonia removal efficiency in winter. Functional genes predicted by Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Unobserved States indicated stability of their structures and contents in both summer and winter. These results suggested that seasonal variation would shift the microbial community structures, but not enough to change the functional genes. Results also provide a reference for the further study on microbial community structures of municipal WWTPs, especially with unstable performance.
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