Rock structure drives the taxonomic and functional diversity of endolithic microbial communities in extreme environments

Summary Endolithic (rock‐dwelling) microbial communities are ubiquitous in hyper‐arid deserts around the world and the last resort for life under extreme aridity. These communities are excellent models to explore biotic and abiotic drivers of diversity because they are of low complexity. Using high‐throughput amplicon and metagenome sequencing, combined with X‐ray computed tomography, we investigated how water availability and substrate...