Abstract
Wastewater discharge evidently increased bacterial diversity in the receiving waterbodies. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a constructed wetland in reducing fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) and antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs). We determined the prevalence and attenuation of fecal indicator bacteria including
Escherichia coli
and enterococci, along with ARGs, and human-associated
Bacteroidales
(HF183) markers by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) method. Three types of water samples (inlet, intermediate, and outlet) from a constructed wetland were collected once a month from May to December in 2013. The overall reduction of
E. coli
was 50.0% based on culture method. According to the qPCR result, the overall removal rate of
E. coli
was only 6.7%. Enterococci were found in 62.5% of the wetland samples. HF183 genetic marker was detected in all final effluent samples with concentration ranging from 1.8 to 4.22 log
10
gene copies (GC)/100 ml. Of the ARGs tested, erythromycin resistance genes (
ermF
) were detected in 79.2% of the wetland samples. The class 1 integrase (
intI1
) was detected in all water samples with concentration ranging from 0.83 to 5.54 log
10
GC/100 ml. The overall removal rates of enterococci, HF183,
intI1
, and
ermF
were 84.0%, 66.6%, 67.2%, and 13.1%, respectively.