Trophic transfer efficiency of microbial food webs differs in water and sediment in alpine wetlands across the Tibetan Plateau.

The Tibetan Plateau contains the world's largest area of alpine wetlands, where coexisting water and sediment environments provide habitats for multitrophic microbial communities. However, the microbial food web (MFW) of coexisting water and sediment in wetland ecosystems and their responses to environmental changes remain unclear. In this study, we investigated MFWs (including archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes) across 21 paired samples from alpine wetlands on the Tibetan Plateau along a salinity gradient.