Machine learning-driven mapping of prokaryotic community diversity in the Mediterranean Sea using omics, earth observation, and model data

20 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, supplementary material https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2026.103747.-- Data availability: All environmental data used in this study are publicly available from the Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS) at https://marine.copernicus.eu. The complete 16S rRNA gene dataset used in this study to compute the Shannon Diversity Index is not publicly available but can be made available by the authors upon reasonable request. The 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequences generated at the VIDA station between 2018 and 2021 are available in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under BioProject accession number PRJEB60871. The 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequences generated during the Tara Mediterranean expedition in 2014 are available in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under BioProject accession number PRJNA380761. All 16S rRNA amplicon sequence variant (ASV) data from NEREA are publicly available in the Zenodo Sample Registry “NEREA – Naples Ecological REsearch for Augmented observatories” (https://zenodo.org/communities/nerea/records). The processing scripts for 16S ASV generation and taxonomic assignment are archived at Doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12801913