Abstract
Salinity acts as a critical environmental filter on microbial communities in natural systems, negatively affecting microbial diversity. However, how salinity affects microbial community assembly remains unclear. This study used Wendeng multi-pond saltern as a model to evaluate the prokaryotic community composition and diversity and quantify the relative importance of ecological processes across salinity gradients. The results showed that low-saline salterns (45–80 g/L) exhibited higher bacterial diversity than high-saline salterns (175–265 g/L). The relative abundance of taxa assigned to Halomicrobiaceae, Rhodobacteraceae, Saprospiraceae, and Thiotrichaceae exhibited a hump-shaped dependence on increasing salinity. Salinity and pH were the primary environmental factors that directly or indirectly determined the composition and diversity of prokaryotic communities. Microbial co-occurrence network dynamics were more complex in the sediment than in the water of salterns. An infer Community Assembly Mechanisms by Phylogenetic-bin-based null model analysis (iCAMP) showed that microbial community assembly in sediment and water differed. Our findings provide more information about microbial community structure and the importance of various ecological processes in controlling microbial community diversity and succession along salinity gradients in water and sediment.
Highlights
Salinity acts as a critical environmental filter on microbial communities in ecosystems [1,2]
In multi-pond salterns, salinity could play an important role in shaping microbial community composition, and it was found that microbial diversity decreased as salinity increased [14]
The orange and blue lines represent sediment and water groups in salterns, non inrdesepxe)cwtiveerlye. a(Bn)a, lNyozne-dmbetyricRmpualtcikdiamgeen(smionicalrosceaclion)ga(nNdMaDrSe) dwiasspplaeryfoerdmaedlotnogexahgibriat dthieenβ-t of incr salinitdyi.vTerhsietyoorfathnegperoaknadryobtilcuceomlinmeusnirtyepinresasletenrnt ss.ediment and water groups in salterns, respec (B), Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) was performed to exhibit the β-diversity prokaryotiTcocfoumrthmeur inlliutystrinatesathlteervnasri.ation of prokaryotic communities, we measured a series of physicochemical factors (Table S2)
Summary
Salinity acts as a critical environmental filter on microbial communities in ecosystems [1,2]. In multi-pond salterns, salinity could play an important role in shaping microbial community composition, and it was found that microbial diversity decreased as salinity increased [14]. This pattern is not consistently observed for all microbial communities [15]. The objectives of this study were to (a) compare the microbial community composition and diversity in multi-pond solar salterns using 16S rRNA gene amplicons; (b) evaluate the distribution patterns of the microbial community composition and across entire prokaryotic communities along with salinity and other environmental factors; (c) determine how salinity affects microbial community assembly processes in water and sediments
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