Climate and Environmental Variables Drive Stream Biofilm Bacterial and Fungal Diversity on Tropical Mountainsides

High mountain freshwater systems are particularly sensitive to the impacts of global warming and relevant environmental changes. Microorganisms contribute substantially to biogeochemical processes, yet their distribution patterns and driving mechanism in alpine streams remain understudied. Here, we examined the bacterial and fungal community compositions in stream biofilm along the elevational gradient of 745-1874 m on Mt. Kilimanjaro and explored their alpha and beta diversity patterns and the underlying environmental drivers. We found that the species richness and evenness monotonically increased towards higher elevations for bacteria, while were non-significant for fungi. However, both bacterial and fungal communities showed consistent elevational distance-decay relationships, i.e., the dissimilarity of assemblage composition increased with greater elevational differences. Bacterial alpha diversity patterns were mainly affected by chemical variables such as total nitrogen and phosphorus, while fungi were affected by physical variables such as riparian shading and stream width. Notably, climatic variables such as mean annual temperature strongly affected the elevational succession of bacterial and fungal community compositions. Our study is the first exploration of microbial biodiversity and their underlying driving mechanisms for stream ecosystems in tropical alpine regions. Our findings provide insights on the response patterns of tropical aquatic microbial community composition and diversity under climate change.