Bacterial microbiome and mineralogy of layered structures in sabkhas salt flats
Sabkhas (salt flats in Arabic) are coastal ecosystems in arid regions characterized by high salinity and periodic flooding. The extreme environments of sabkhas serve as a refuge for unique microbes and are often considered analogs of possible life on Mars. Understanding spatial microbial and mineralogical successions provides a valuable tool for the palaeogeological interpretation of fossilized structures The main objective of this study is to shed light on an interplay between microbes in layers of sediment structures at the sabkhas surface and mineralized laminae. The surface of the intertidal Dohat Faishakh Sabkha, located on Qatar's northeastern coast, consisting of microbial mats and mineral laminae, was investigated at high spatial resolution. The samples from multiple sediment layers were collected from the upper 6 cm of the sabkha's surface at a resolution of millimetres The bacterial diversity was investigated at a millimetre (mm) resolution using amplicon sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes.