Microbial diversity and the presence of algae in halite endolithic communities are correlated to atmospheric moisture in the hyper‐arid zone of the Atacama Desert

Summary The A tacama D esert is one of the oldest and driest deserts in the world, and its hyper‐arid core is described as ‘the most barren region imaginable’. We used a combination of high‐throughput sequencing and microscopy methods to characterize the endolithic microbial assemblages of halite pinnacles (salt rocks) collected in several hyper‐arid areas of the desert. We found communities dominated by archaea that relied on a single phylotype...