MARTÍN CUADRADO , Ana Belén

Marine salterns are composed of several shallow ponds with a salinity gradient, from seawater to salt saturation, with gradually changing microbial populations. Here, we report the metagenome sequencing of the prokaryotic microbiota of two ponds with 13% and 33% salinity from a saltern in Santa Pola, Spain.

We describe the microbiota of two hypersaline saltern ponds, one of intermediate salinity (19%) and a NaCl saturated crystallizer pond (37%) using pyrosequencing. The analyses of these metagenomes (nearly 784 Mb) reaffirmed the vast dominance of Haloquadratum walsbyi but also revealed novel, abundant and previously unsuspected microbial groups....