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Abstract. Mangrove forests are ecosystems that constitute a large portion of the world's coastline and span tidal zones below, between, and above thewaterline, and the ecosystem as a whole is defined by the health of these tidal microhabitats. However, we are only beginning to understand tidal-zone microbial biodiversity and the role of these microbiomes in nutrient cycling. While extensive research has characterized microbiomes inpristine vs. anthropogenically impacted mangroves, these have, largely, overlooked differences in tidal microhabitats (sublittoral, intertidal, andsupralittoral). Unfortunately, the small number of studies that have sought to characterize mangrove tidal zones have occurred in impacted biomes,making interpretation of the results difficult. Here, we characterized prokaryotic populations and their involvement in nutrient cycling across thetidal zones of a pristine mangrove within a Brazilian Environmental Protection Area of the Atlantic Forest. We hypothesized that the tidal zones inpristine mangroves are distinct microhabitats, which we defined as distinct regions that present spatial variations in the water regime and otherenvironmental factors, and as such, these are composed of different prokaryotic communities with distinct functional profiles. Samples werecollected in triplicate from zones below, between, and above the tidal waterline. Using 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene amplicon sequencing, we found distinctprokaryotic communities with significantly diverse nutrient-cycling functions, as well as specific taxa with varying contributions to functionalabundances between zones. Where previous research from anthropogenically impacted mangroves found the intertidal zone to have high prokaryoticdiversity and be functionally enriched in nitrogen cycling, we find that the intertidal zone from pristine mangroves has the lowest diversity and nofunctional enrichment, relative to the other tidal zones. The main bacterial phyla in all samples were Firmicutes, Proteobacteria,and Chloroflexi while the main archaeal phyla were Crenarchaeota and Thaumarchaeota. Our results differ slightly fromother studies where Proteobacteria is the main phyla in mangrove sediments and Firmicutes makes up only a small percentage ofthe communities. Salinity and organic matter were the most relevant environmental factors influencing these communities. Bacillaceae wasthe most abundant family at each tidal zone and showed potential to drive a large proportion of the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, andsulfur. Our findings suggest that some aspects of mangrove tidal zonation may be compromised by human activity, especially in the intertidal zone.
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