Assessment of microbial community diversity in lakes of İğneada floodplain forest by metabarcoding approach

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of bacterial community patterns of the lakes of İğneada Floodplain Forest by metabarcoding approach. Within this scope, surface water samples were collected from three lakes located in the area namely Mert Lake, Hamam Lake, and Saka Lake, and the bacterial diversity was assessed by a high throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Chao1 richness and Shannon diversity were higher in Saka Lake indicated a more diverse bacterial community. Proteobacteria was by far the most abundant phyla in all lakes. Although Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria also dominated the community, their abundances differed in each lake. While the family Burkholderiaceae represented 25% of the bacterial community in Saka Lake, the abundances were 9% and 4% in Hamam Lake and Mert Lake, respectively. This study is one of the first investigations specifically focused on the bacterial communities in three lakes of İğneada Floodplain by next-generation sequencing platform and gave a prescreening of the bacterial diversity. Further studies are required to determine the biotechnological potential of this unique habitat