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).