title: Drop-size soda lakes: transient microbial habitats on a salt-secreting desert tree.
abstract: We describe a hitherto unrecognized bacterial community, inhabiting the leaf surfaces of the salt-excreting desert tree Tamarix. High temperatures, strong radiation, and very low humidity dictate a daytime existence in complete desiccation, but damp nights allow the microbial population to proliferate in a sugar-rich, alkaline, and hypersaline solution, before drying up again after sunrise. The exclusively bacterial population contains many undescribed species and genera, but nevertheless appears to be characterized by relatively limited species diversity. Sequences of 16S rRNA genes from either isolates or total community DNA place the identified members of the community in five bacterial groups (Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, alpha-, and gamma-Proteobacteria); in each of these, they concentrate in a very narrow branch that in most cases harbors organisms isolated from unrelated halophilic environments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
authors.forename: Noga
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Qvit-Raz
authors.forename: Edouard
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Jurkevitch
authors.forename: Shimshon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Belkin
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000648:ultrastructure; D003889:Desert Climate; D017753:Ecosystem; D014644:Genetic Variation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000382:microbiology; D018547:Plant Stems / Q000648:ultrastructure; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012965:Sodium Chloride / Q000378:metabolism*; D032363:Tamaricaceae / Q000382:microbiology*
chemical_list: D012965:Sodium Chloride