Bacterial composition of soils of the Lake Wellman area, Dar
Details of Research
TitleBacterial composition of soils of the Lake Wellman area, Darwin Mountains, AntarcticaAbstractThe aim of this study was to examine the bacterial composition of high latitude soils from the Darwin-Hatherton glacier region of Antarctica. Four soil pits on each of four glacial drift sheets were sampled for chemical and microbial analyses. The four drifts-Hatherton, Britannia, Danum, and Isca-ranged, respectively, from early Holocene (10 ky) to mid-Quaternary (ca 900 ky). Numbers of culturable bacteria were low, with highest levels detected in soils from the younger Hatherton drift. DNA was extracted and 16S rRNA gene clone libraries prepared from samples below the desert pavement for each of the four drift sheets. Between 31 and 262 clones were analysed from each of the Hatherton, Britannia, and Danum drifts. Bacterial sequences were dominated by members of the phyla Deinococcus-Thermus, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. Culturable bacteria, including some that clustered with soil clones (e.g., members of the genera Arthrobacter, Adhaeribacter, and Pontibacter), belonged to Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes. The isolated bacteria are ideal model organisms for genomic and phenotypic investigations of those attributes that allow bacteria to survive and/or grow in Antarctic soils because they have close relatives that are not tolerant of these conditions. Copyright 2013 Springer Japan.AcknowledgementsThis research was supported by funding from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, New Zealand (C09X0307 and C09X1001). Antarctica New Zealand provided logistic support. Soil analyses were carried out in the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory, Landcare Research, New Zealand.
TypeArticleCitationAislabie, J., Lau, A., Dsouza, M., Shepherd, C., Rhodes, P. and Turner, S. (2013). Bacterial composition of soils of the Lake Wellman area, Darwin Mountains, Antarctica. Extremophiles, 17(5): 775-786 IdentifierAislabie2013Relevancerank5
Turner, S., Bacterial composition of soils of the Lake Wellman area, Dar , [Aislabie2013]. Antarctica NZ, accessed 18/06/2025, https://adam.antarcticanz.govt.nz/nodes/view/63355, 10.1007/s00792-013-0560-6
