Environmental controls on estuarine nitrifying communities along a salinity gradient.. Estuarine prokaryotic communities

Estuaries are transitional zones between marine and freshwater environments and are ideal systems to study the influence of environmental gradients on microbial biodiversity and activity. In this study, we investigated the effect of a salinity gradient on the structure of prokaryotic communities from intertidal sediments of the Douro estuary, and on the nitrification process. Four locations were chosen with distinct salinities and characterized for a range of environmental parameters including the measure of potential nitrification rates. The structure of prokaryotic communities was characterized and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and archaea (AOA) were identified using16S rRNA gene.