Unravelling the bacterial diversity found in the semi-arid Tablas de Daimiel National Park wetland (central Spain)

Our knowledge of microbial diversity in the environment is still limited, and there are many species as yet unidentified in both soil and water. Studies of the microbial diversity of wetland ecosystems have been neglected for years, as is the case of Tablas de Daimiel National Park (TDNP), a Spanish semi-arid wetland system of international importance in terms of waterfowl. We report the bacterial diversity of water column, sediment (upper and lower layers) and biofilm samples from the TDNP system using a 16S rRNA gene library approach. A sequence comparison of the 703 clones obtained revealed a number of bacterial phylogroups unreported to date. Bacterial diversity was high (Shannon values…