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Abstract

Streets are constantly crossed by billions of vehicles and pedestrians.
Their gutters, which convey stormwater and contribute to waste
management, and are important for human health and well-being, probably
play a number of ecological roles. Street surfaces may also represent an
important part of city surface areas. To better characterize the ecology
of this yet poorly explored compartment, we used filtration and DNA
metabarcoding to address microbial community composition and assembly
across the city of Paris, France. Diverse bacterial and eukaryotic
taxonomic groups were identified, including members involved in key
biogeochemical processes, along with a number of parasites and putative
pathogens of human, animals and plants. We showed that the beta
diversity patterns between bacterial and eukaryotic communities were
correlated, suggesting interdomain associations. Beta diversity analyses
revealed the significance of biotic factors (cohesion metrics) in
shaping gutter microbial community assembly and, to a lesser extent, the
contribution of abiotic factors (pH and conductivity). Co-occurrences
analysis confirmed contrasting non-random patterns both within and
between domains of life, specifically when comparing diatoms and fungi.
Our results highlight microbial coexistence patterns in streets and
reinforce the need to further explore biodiversity in urban ground
transportation infrastructures.