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Seagrass ecosystems as green urban infrastructure to mediate human pathogens in seafood

Nature Sustainability (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Urban greening offers an opportunity to reinforce food security and safety. Seagrass ecosystems can reduce human bacterial pathogens from coastal sources, but it remains unknown whether this service is conferred to associated food fish. We find a 65% reduction in human bacterial pathogens from marine bivalves experimentally deployed across coastal urban locations with seagrass present compared with locations with seagrass absent. Our model estimates that 1.1 billion people reside in urban areas within 50 km of a seagrass ecosystem. These results highlight the global opportunity to support human health and biodiversity sustainability targets.

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Fig. 1: Urban seagrass ecosystems influence bacterial species with known human pathogenicity in food from the sea.
Fig. 2: Global co-occurrence of seagrass ecosystems, wild capture and aquaculture bivalve harvest, and projected urban population agglomerations by 2030.

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Data availability

Sequence data are archived at the National Center for Biotechnology Information under accession number PRJNA955437. Data are openly available through the Dryad Digital Repository under https://doi.org/10.7280/D1739X ref. 16. Current and future projections of urban agglomerations adjacent to seagrass ecosystems were performed using datasets available from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs at https://population.un.org/wup/download, and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species at https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/spatial-data-download. Bivalve global capture production datasets were synthesized from the Fisheries and Aquaculture Division of the UN FAO available at https://www.fao.org/fishery/en/collection/capture. To select for urban locations, we integrated publicly available information on population density available from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center hosted by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University available at https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/gpw-v4-population-count-rev11, with regional land cover available from the NOAA Office for Coastal Management available at https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/data, and watershed administrative units available from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources Forest Practices Division at https://fortress.wa.gov/dnr/adminsa/gisdata/metadata/wau.htm. Taxonomy was assigned using the All Species Living Tree Project database available at https://imedea.uib-csic.es/mmg/ltp.

Code availability

Code is openly available through the Dryad Digital Repository under https://doi.org/10.7280/D1739X ref. 16.

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Acknowledgements

P.D.D. J.L.G., J.A.L., C.D.H. and J.B.L. were supported by the Sea Doc Society, a programme of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis. P.D.D., E.A.F. and J.B.L. were supported by the University of California, Irvine. J.B.L. was supported by The Nature Conservancy. We thank C. Wood for assistance with laboratory facilities; M. Eisenlord, S. Dayal, T. Young and volunteers of the Sound Water Stewards for assistance in the field.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Phoebe D. Dawkins, Evan A. Fiorenza & Joleah B. Lamb

  2. Aquatic Resources Division, Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Olympia, WA, USA

    Jeffrey L. Gaeckle

  3. Toxicology and Contaminant Assessment Unit, King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, Seattle, WA, USA

    Jennifer A. Lanksbury

  4. Department of Estuarine and Delta Systems, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Yerseke, the Netherlands

    Jeroen A. J. M. van de Water

  5. Spanish National Research Council, Doñana Biological Station, Sevilla, Spain

    William E. Feeney

  6. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, New York, NY, USA

    C. Drew Harvell

  7. School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    C. Drew Harvell

Authors
  1. Phoebe D. Dawkins
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  2. Evan A. Fiorenza
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Contributions

P.D.D., J.L.G., J.A.L, C.D.H. and J.B.L. designed the study. Fieldwork was conducted by P.D.D., E.A.F., J.L.G., J.A.L., C.D.H. and J.B.L. Sample processing was performed by P.D.D., E.A.F., J.A.L. and J.B.L. J.A.J.M.v.d.W. conducted bioinformatics. P.D.D., E.A.F., W.E.F. and J.B.L. prepared the original paper draft with support from C.D.H., J.A.L. and J.L.G., and J.A.J.M.v.d.W. provided valuable edits. E.A.F. conducted statistical modelling. Figures were prepared by P.D.D., E.A.F. and J.B.L. C.D.H., J.L.G., J.A.L. and J.B.L. acquired funding.

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Correspondence to Joleah B. Lamb.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Ioannis A. Giantsis, Yann Reynaud and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Fig. 1, Tables 1–5 and References.

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Dawkins, P.D., Fiorenza, E.A., Gaeckle, J.L. et al. Seagrass ecosystems as green urban infrastructure to mediate human pathogens in seafood. Nat Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01408-5

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