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Seasonality of Glacial Snow and Ice Microbial Communities

Blooms of microalgae on glaciers and ice sheets are amplifying surface ice melting rates, which are already affected by climate change. Most studies on glacial microorganisms (including snow and glacier ice algae) have so far focused on the spring and summer melt season, leading to a temporal bias,...

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Autores principales: Winkel, Matthias, Trivedi, Christopher B., Mourot, Rey, Bradley, James A., Vieth-Hillebrand, Andrea, Benning, Liane G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9149292/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35651494
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.876848
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author Winkel, Matthias
Trivedi, Christopher B.
Mourot, Rey
Bradley, James A.
Vieth-Hillebrand, Andrea
Benning, Liane G.
author_facet Winkel, Matthias
Trivedi, Christopher B.
Mourot, Rey
Bradley, James A.
Vieth-Hillebrand, Andrea
Benning, Liane G.
author_sort Winkel, Matthias
collection PubMed
description Blooms of microalgae on glaciers and ice sheets are amplifying surface ice melting rates, which are already affected by climate change. Most studies on glacial microorganisms (including snow and glacier ice algae) have so far focused on the spring and summer melt season, leading to a temporal bias, and a knowledge gap in our understanding of the variations in microbial diversity, productivity, and physiology on glacier surfaces year-round. Here, we investigated the microbial communities from Icelandic glacier surface snow and bare ice habitats, with sampling spanning two consecutive years and carried out in both winter and two summer seasons. We evaluated the seasonal differences in microbial community composition using Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA, 18S rRNA, and ITS marker genes and correlating them with geochemical signals in the snow and ice. During summer, Chloromonas, Chlainomonas, Raphidonema, and Hydrurus dominated surface snow algal communities, while Ancylonema and Mesotaenium dominated the surface bare ice habitats. In winter, algae could not be detected, and the community composition was dominated by bacteria and fungi. The dominant bacterial taxa found in both winter and summer samples were Bacteriodetes, Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria. The winter bacterial communities showed high similarities to airborne and fresh snow bacteria reported in other studies. This points toward the importance of dry and wet deposition as a wintertime source of microorganisms to the glacier surface. Winter samples were also richer in nutrients than summer samples, except for dissolved organic carbon—which was highest in summer snow and ice samples with blooming microalgae, suggesting that nutrients are accumulated during winter but primarily used by the microbial communities in the summer. Overall, our study shows that glacial snow and ice microbial communities are highly variable on a seasonal basis.
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spelling pubmed-91492922022-05-31 Seasonality of Glacial Snow and Ice Microbial Communities Winkel, Matthias Trivedi, Christopher B. Mourot, Rey Bradley, James A. Vieth-Hillebrand, Andrea Benning, Liane G. Front Microbiol Microbiology Blooms of microalgae on glaciers and ice sheets are amplifying surface ice melting rates, which are already affected by climate change. Most studies on glacial microorganisms (including snow and glacier ice algae) have so far focused on the spring and summer melt season, leading to a temporal bias, and a knowledge gap in our understanding of the variations in microbial diversity, productivity, and physiology on glacier surfaces year-round. Here, we investigated the microbial communities from Icelandic glacier surface snow and bare ice habitats, with sampling spanning two consecutive years and carried out in both winter and two summer seasons. We evaluated the seasonal differences in microbial community composition using Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA, 18S rRNA, and ITS marker genes and correlating them with geochemical signals in the snow and ice. During summer, Chloromonas, Chlainomonas, Raphidonema, and Hydrurus dominated surface snow algal communities, while Ancylonema and Mesotaenium dominated the surface bare ice habitats. In winter, algae could not be detected, and the community composition was dominated by bacteria and fungi. The dominant bacterial taxa found in both winter and summer samples were Bacteriodetes, Actinobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria. The winter bacterial communities showed high similarities to airborne and fresh snow bacteria reported in other studies. This points toward the importance of dry and wet deposition as a wintertime source of microorganisms to the glacier surface. Winter samples were also richer in nutrients than summer samples, except for dissolved organic carbon—which was highest in summer snow and ice samples with blooming microalgae, suggesting that nutrients are accumulated during winter but primarily used by the microbial communities in the summer. Overall, our study shows that glacial snow and ice microbial communities are highly variable on a seasonal basis. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9149292/ /pubmed/35651494 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.876848 Text en Copyright © 2022 Winkel, Trivedi, Mourot, Bradley, Vieth-Hillebrand and Benning. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Microbiology
Winkel, Matthias
Trivedi, Christopher B.
Mourot, Rey
Bradley, James A.
Vieth-Hillebrand, Andrea
Benning, Liane G.
Seasonality of Glacial Snow and Ice Microbial Communities
title Seasonality of Glacial Snow and Ice Microbial Communities
title_full Seasonality of Glacial Snow and Ice Microbial Communities
title_fullStr Seasonality of Glacial Snow and Ice Microbial Communities
title_full_unstemmed Seasonality of Glacial Snow and Ice Microbial Communities
title_short Seasonality of Glacial Snow and Ice Microbial Communities
title_sort seasonality of glacial snow and ice microbial communities
topic Microbiology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9149292/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35651494
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.876848
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