Species-level classification provides new insights into the biogeographical patterns of microbial communities in shallow saline lakes

Saline lakes are rapidly drying out across the globe, particularly in Central Asia, due to climate change and anthropogenic activities. We present the results of a long-read next generation sequencing analysis of the 16S rRNA-based taxonomic structure of bacteriomes of the Tengiz-Korgalzhyn lakes system. We found that the shallow endorheic, mostly saline lakes of the system show unusually low bacterioplankton dispersal rates at species-level taxonomic resolution. The major environmental factor structuring the lakes microbial communities was salinity. The dominant bacterial phyla of the lakes with high salinity included a significant proportion of marine and halophilic species. In sum, these results, which can be applied to other lake systems of the semi-arid regions, improve our understanding of the factors influencing lake microbiomes undergoing salinization in response to climate change and other anthropogenic factors. Our results show that finer taxonomic classification can provide new insights and improve our understanding of the environmental factors influencing the microbiomes of lakes undergoing salinization in response to climate change and other anthropogenic factors.