Posidonia oceanica leaf and meristem transcriptomes under desalination-related hypersalinity in mesocosm and field settings
Paired mesocosm and field-transplant experiment testing how the transcriptomic response of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica to desalination-related hypersalinity transfers between controlled and natural settings. Plant material from a single donor meadow at Isla Grosa (Murcia, Spain) was exposed either in 300-L mesocosm aquaria at +6 psu above ambient salinity, or as field transplants at a brine-affected site (~42 psu) and an ambient-salinity control site (~37 psu) on the coast of Alicante, Spain. Leaf tissue was sampled after 1 and 10 days of exposure in the mesocosm and after 1 and 6 days in the field; apical meristem tissue was sampled at the final time point of each experiment, day 10 in the mesocosm and day 6 in the field. Thirty poly(A)-enriched libraries were sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq 6000 with paired-end 150 bp reads.