Correction to: Nature Microbiology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-019-0426-5, published online 13 May 2019.

In the version of this Article originally published, the name of the author ‘Mathew Robert Brown’ was incorrectly written as ‘Mathew Brown’ in the main author list and as ‘Matthew Brown’ in the Global Water Microbiome Consortium list. In addition, in the Global Water Microbiome Consortium list, the names of the authors ‘Kevin F. Boehnke’, ‘Janeth Sanabria’ and ‘Adalberto Noyola’ were incorrectly written as ‘Kevin Boehnke’, ‘Janeth Sanabria Gómez’ and ‘Adalberto Noyola Robles’, respectively. The names have now been corrected and the author initials in the author contributions section updated accordingly.