Fig. 3

Discriminative features and distribution of functional potential and metabolic activity across the salinity gradient. a Differentially abundant metabolic functions from metagenomic (top, n = 36) and metatranscriptomic (bottom, n = 33) data, as determined by LEfSe (specific pathways from Supplementary Table 5). Arrows indicate functions were significantly over-represented in their specific habitat. b Pie charts showing the relative fraction of functional gene categories across the freshwater-to-marine gradient based on metagenome and metatranscriptome data. Transcriptomic data were not obtained for marine sands due to low RNA quality. Colours in both panels indicate key nutrient acquisition and osmoregulation pathways