The Santa Pola saltern as a model for studying the microbiota of hypersaline environments

Multi-pond salterns constitute an excellent model for the study of the microbial diversity and ecology of hypersaline environments, showing a wide range of salt concentrations, from seawater to salt saturation. Accumulated studies on the Santa Pola (Alicante, Spain) multi-pond solar saltern during t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ventosa Ucero, Antonio, Fernández González, Ana Beatriz, León León, María José, Sánchez-Porro Álvarez, Cristina, Rodríguez Valera, Francisco
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/162825
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/162825
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-014-0681-6
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Haloarchaea
Halophilic bacteria
Hypersaline habitats
Metagenomics
Microbial ecology
Salterns
Santa Pola
Descripción
Sumario:Multi-pond salterns constitute an excellent model for the study of the microbial diversity and ecology of hypersaline environments, showing a wide range of salt concentrations, from seawater to salt saturation. Accumulated studies on the Santa Pola (Alicante, Spain) multi-pond solar saltern during the last 35 years include culture-dependent and culture-independent molecular methods and metagenomics more recently. These approaches have permitted to determine in depth the microbial diversity of the ponds with intermediate salinities (from 10 % salts) up to salt saturation, with haloarchaea and bacteria as the two main dominant groups. In this review, we describe the main results obtained using the different methodologies, the most relevant contributions for understanding the ecology of these extreme environments and the future perspectives for such studies.