Microbial Community Profiles of Biofilms from Hot Springs: 16S and 18S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing Data

This article presents microbial diversity data from biofilms collected from the sides or outflows of several Malaysian hot springs, with temperatures ranging from 38 to 56 °C and pH values between 7.1 and 8.7. Genomic DNA was extracted from the biofilms and subjected to 16S V3-V4 and 18S V4 amplicon sequencing using the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform. Reads were processed with various bioinformatic tools including QIIME2, and eventually, amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) were identified. In almost all analyzed biofilms, approximately 50% of the total ASVs belonged to Cyanobacteriota and Chloroflexota, except for one biofilm, labeled DTO, which was dominated by Pseudomonadata and Cyanobacteriota. Besides bacteria, the data also suggest the presence of various eukaryotic organisms, including small animals such as nematodes, rotifers, and arthropods; fungi and fungus-like organisms such as Ascomycota, Zoopagomycota, Oomycota, and Cryptomycota; as well as photosynthetic eukaryotes from the Viridiplantae group. This dataset serves as a valuable resource for microbial ecology studies in hot spring biofilms and is openly available for reuse, providing a foundation for future research on microbial diversity and functional roles in geothermal ecosystems.