2025/12/14 by Attila Szabó, Anna J. Székely, Emil Boros +8 · 1 voice
Environmental Science · Materials Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology #Diatoms and Algae Research #Marine and coastal ecosystems
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/lol2.70088
openalex publication_date 2025/12/14 · openalex created_date 2025/12/15 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Abstract While the influence of salinity on microbial diversity is well documented in marine and brackish ecosystems, the impact of different dissolved inorganic ion types remains largely unexplored. In this study, we assessed how ionic composition shapes planktonic bacterial community structure in inland saline aquatic habitats, compared to the effects of salinity alone, spatial factors, and other environmental variables. We collected and analyzed 16S rRNA gene amplicon datasets from freshwater to hypersaline aquatic environments worldwide (375 samples from 130 lakes). The composition of major ions explained more variability in bacterioplankton structure than bulk salinity. Taxa contributing the most to the observed dissimilarity between communities included lineages characteristic of specific habitat types, such as Actinobacteria acI in freshwater, Halomonadaceae in saline waters, or Nitriliruptorales in soda‐ and soda‐saline systems. Many of these indicator lineages for specific habitat types were monophyletic, further underpinning ionic composition as a crucial eco‐evolutionary driver of aquatic microbial diversity.