Recent differentiation of aquatic bacterial communities in a hydrological system in the Cuatro Cienegas Basin, after a natural perturbation

This work aims to contribute to the current knowledge of community establishment based on grinnellian and eltonian niche frameworks. In this work, we attempt to assess how natural microbial communities establish after an ecological disturbance: a tropical cyclone that temporally merged ten water bodies that were initally isolated. Our findings suggest that the communities in this hydrological system appear to be structured based on their interspecific ecological interactions, rather than environmental variables aside from pH and temperature. Hence, the community composition is established mostly based on an eltonian niche framework. This finding might be valuable for other hydrological systems with similar conditions to the Pozas Rojas system, since eltonian niche establishment could be a common process in aquatic environments, epicontinental and marine.