Dynamics of Vibrio populations in aquatic environments are of concern, as they encompass members pathogenic to humans as well as marine flora and fauna. Spatiotemporal distribution of its culturable abundance for a range of physicochemical and biological parameters in the Cochin estuary (CE), one of the largest tropical monsoonal estuary along the southwest coast of India, witnessed a proliferation of this bacterial group (707 ± 196 CFU ml-1) in downstream stations during a relative dry period. The study for the first time employed classification and regression tree (CART) along with multiple linear regression (MLR) based approaches to explore the nonlinear and linear interactions, respectively, among environmental variables regulating Vibrio abundance in CE. Both the techniques were on consensus to ascertain salinity as the primary determinant of Vibrio dynamics, during the entire sampling period regardless of the seasons, viz., dry and wet. Nevertheless, CART outperformed MLR in performance index, suggesting that in a dynamic system like estuaries, usage of the latter is limited by complex nonlinear relationships among environmental variables. According to CART, Vibrio proliferation observed in downstream stations of the estuary (salinity ≥ 13.4 psu) during a relative dry period was driven by eutrophication (dissolved inorganic phosphate ≥ 1.48 μM L-1) associated with reduced flushing resulting in an oxygen-limited environment (dissolved oxygen < 4.56 ml L-1), wherein phytoplankton production diverts to support microbes. Our results imply that anthropogenic activities and sea level rise in future may prompt Vibrio proliferation, to be a concern for public health and impinge on fisheries yield from tropical estuaries.
Keywords: Classification and regression tree; Dynamics; Environmental variables; Estuary; Tropics; Vibrio.