Ecological status is reflected in combined and domain specific molecular biome profiles
The relationship between ecological status and the composition of the molecular biome profile was investigated through beta diversity analysis with ordination. Unconstrained ordination analysis using correspondence analysis (CA) showed little to no separation between ecological status groups (data not shown). However, the use of the ecological status of the samples as a constraint for canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) revealed strong clustering and separation of the sampled locations for the whole biome data, as well as the three individual domains (Figure 2). Near complete separation of the five ecological status groups was achieved for the whole biome data (Figure 2a), while the Bacteria(Figure 2b and Eukaryota (Figure 2d) also showed clustering by ecological status but with overlap between categories. TheArchaea ZOTUs were not able to separate the sampled locations in a meaningful way (Figure 2c). The two lowest ecological statuses (Bad and Poor) were generally separated further away from the remaining samples, while overlap was seen primarily for locations of Good and High ecological status.