Alsaffar, ZPearman, J. K.Cúrdia, J.Ellis, Joanne I.Calleja, M.L.Ruiz-Compean, P.Roth, F.Villalobos, R.Jones, B.H.Morán, X.A.G.Carvalho, S.2020-09-112020-09-112020Alsaffar, Z., Pearman, J. K., Cúrdia, J., Ellis, J. I., Calleja, M. L., Ruiz-Compean, P., … Carvalho, S. (2020). The role of seagrass vegetation and local environmental conditions in shaping benthic bacterial and macroinvertebrate communities in a tropical coastal lagoon. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 13550. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70318-1https://hdl.handle.net/10289/13819We investigated the influence of seagrass canopies on the benthic biodiversity of bacteria and macroinvertebrates in a Red Sea tropical lagoon. Changes in abundance, number of taxa and assemblage structure were analyzed in response to seagrass densities (low, SLD; high, SHD; seagrasses with algae, SA), and compared with unvegetated sediments. Biological and environmental variables were examined in these four habitats (hereafter called treatments), both in the underlaying sediments and overlaying waters, at three randomly picked locations in March 2017. Differences between treatments were more apparent in the benthic habitat than in the overlaying waters. The presence of vegetation (more than its cover) and changes in sedimentary features (grain size and metals) at local scales influenced the observed biological patterns, particularly for macroinvertebrates. Of note, the highest percentage of exclusive macroinvertebrate taxa (18% of the gamma diversity) was observed in the SHD treatment peaking in the SA for bacteria. Benthic macroinvertebrates and bacteria shared a generally low number of taxa across treatments and locations; approximately, 25% of the gamma diversity was shared among all treatments and locations for macrofauna, dropping to 11% for bacteria. Given the low overlap in the species distribution across the lagoon, sustaining the connectivity among heterogeneous soft sediment habitats appears to be essential for maintaining regional biodiversity. This study addresses a current scientific gap related to the relative contributions of vegetated and unvegetated habitats to biodiversity in tropical regions.application/pdfenThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © Te Author(s) 2020Journal Article10.1038/s41598-020-70318-12045-2322