Microbial community composition of transiently wetted Antarc

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TitleMicrobial community composition of transiently wetted Antarctic Dry Valley soilsAbstractDuring the summer months, wet (hyporheic) soils associated with ephemeral streams and lake edges in the Antarctic Dry Valleys (DVs) become hotspots of biological activity and are hypothesized to be an important source of carbon and nitrogen for arid DV soils. Recent research in the DV has focused on the geochemistry and microbial ecology of lakes and arid soils, with substantially less information being available on hyporheic soils. Here, we determined the unique properties of hyporheic microbial communities, resolved their relationship to environmental parameters and compared them to archetypal arid DV soils. Generally, pH increased and chlorophyll a concentrations decreased along transects from wet to arid soils (9.0 to ∼7.0 for pH and ∼0.8 to ∼5 μg/cm3 for chlorophyll a, respectively). Soil water content decreased to below ∼3 percent in the arid soils. Community fingerprinting-based principle component analyses revealed that bacterial communities formed distinct clusters specific to arid and wet soils; however, eukaryotic communities that clustered together did not have similar soil moisture content nor did they group together based on sampling location. Collectively, rRNA pyrosequencing indicated a considerably higher abundance of Cyanobacteria in wet soils and a higher abundance of Acidobacterial, Actinobacterial, Deinococcus/Thermus, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Gemmatimonadetes, Nitrospira, and Planctomycetes in arid soils. The two most significant differences at the genus level were Gillisia signatures present in arid soils and chloroplast signatures related to Streptophyta that were common in wet soils. Fungal dominance was observed in arid soils and Viridiplantae were more common in wet soils. This research represents an in-depth characterization of microbial communities inhabiting wet DV soils. Results indicate that the repeated wetting of hyporheic zones has a profound impact on the bacterial and eukaryotic communities inhabiting in these areas. Copyright 2015 Niederberger, Sohm, Gunderson, Parker, Tirindelli, Capone, Carpenter and Cary.AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank the staff at the United States Antarctic Program, as well as Antarctica New Zealand, and the Foundation for Research in Science and Technology, New Zealand, for logistical support while in the field. This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grants ANT 0739633 (to Douglas G. Capone), ANT 0739640 (to Edward J. Carpenter), and ANT 0739648 and 0944560 (to Stephen C. Cary).Funding DetailsANT 0739633, NSF, National Science Foundation; ANT 0739640, NSF, National Science Foundation; ANT 0739648, NSF, National Science Foundation; ANT 0944560, NSF, National Science Foundation

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1st AuthorNiederberger, T.AuthorNiederberger, T.Sohm, J.Gunderson, T.Parker, A.Tirindelli, J.Capone, D.Carpenter, E.Cary, S.Year2015JournalFrontiers in MicrobiologyVolume6NumberJANDOI10.3389/fmicb.2015.00009URLhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/recor.....5194ee84586469f7a7a271becKeywordsrank5

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TypeArticleCitationNiederberger, T., Sohm, J., Gunderson, T., Parker, A., Tirindelli, J., Capone, D., Carpenter, E. and Cary, S. (2015) Microbial community composition of transiently wetted Antarctic Dry Valley soils. Frontiers in Microbiology, 6(JAN) doi:10.3389/fmicb.2015.00009 IdentifierNiederberger2015bRelevancerank5

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Cary, S.