Hypothesis 1: Salinity
The share of cladocerans and rotifers was expected to be negatively affected by salinity. This hypothesis was, however, not supported. A negative link was found between salinity and A2 axis of PCoA, implying the dominance of simpler organisms as salinity increased (Fig. 6c). When looking at the proportions of individual groups, we found the proportion of rotifers to be positively correlated with salinity (Fig 7b). Proportion of cladocerans was highly variable, but there was no link to salinity (Fig. 7d).