Combined stressors of copper and antibiotics alter nitrogen transformation and multifunctionality of constructed wetlands: Responses of microbes and macrophytes
Constructed wetlands have been widely applied to treat non-point sourcenitrogen (N) pollution in rural areas, but non-point source pollution also containslarge quantities of heavy metals and antibiotics. Although there is an increasingconcern about non-point source N pollution (e.g., Schulte-Uebbing et al. 2022,Nature), little is known about the combined effects of heavy metals and antibiotics onthe N transformation processes and multifunctionality in constructed wetlands.In this work, we chose copper (Cu), sulfamethoxazole (SMZ), doxycycline (DC),and ciprofloxacin (CIP) were selected as target pollutants to investigate the combinedeffects of heavy metals and different types of antibiotics on microbial structure,activity, and function, the oxidative stress and photosynthesis of macrophytes,nitrogen removal processes [i.e., nitrification, denitrification, anammox, and nitrousoxide (N2O) production], and wetland ecosystem multifunctionality in constructedwetlands.