Distinct co-occurrence patterns of prokaryotic community between the waters and sediments in lakes with different salinity

Temporal variations and co-occurrence patterns of the prokaryotic community in saline lakes remain elusive. In this study, we investigated the temporal variations of the prokaryotic community in six lakes with different salinity by using Illumina sequencing. The results showed that prokaryotic community compositions exhibited temporal variations in all studied lakes, which may be partially caused by temporal fluctuations of environmental variables (e.g. salinity, temperature, total nitrogen). Salinity fluctuations exhibited stronger influences on temporal variations of prokaryotic community composition in the lakes with low salinity than in those with high salinity. Stochastic factors (i.e. neutral processes) also contributed to temporal variations of prokaryotic community composition, and their contributions decreased with increasing salinity in the studied saline lakes. Network analysis showed that prokaryotic co-occurrence networks of the studied lakes exhibited non-random topology. Salinity affected the phylogenetic composition of nodes in the studied networks. The topological features (e.g. average connectivity and modularity) of the studied networks significantly differed between lake waters and sediments. Collectively, these results expand our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying prokaryotic community assembly and co-occurrence relationships in saline lakes with different salinity.