@article {5023,
	title = {Soil biota sensitivity to hydroclimate variability in a polar desert ecosystem},
	journal = {Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research},
	volume = {57},
	year = {2025},
	month = {05/2025},
	abstract = {<p>An anomalous warm weather event in the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys on 18 March 2022 created an opportunity to characterize soil biota communities most sensitive to freeze\&ndash;thaw stress. This event caused unseasonal melt within Taylor Valley, activating stream water and microbial mats around Canada Stream. Liquid water availability in this polar desert is a driver of soil biota distribution and activity. Because climate change impacts hydrological regimes, we aimed to determine the effect on soil communities. We sampled soils identified from this event that experienced thaw, nearby hyper-arid areas, and wetted areas that did not experience thaw to compare soil bacterial and invertebrate communities. Areas that exhibited evidence of freeze\&ndash;thaw supported the highest live and dead nematode counts and were composed of soil taxa from hyper-arid landscapes and wetted areas. They received water inputs from snowpacks, hyporheic water, or glacial melt, contributing to community differences associated with organic matter and salinity gradients. Inundated soils had higher organic matter and lower conductivity (p \&lt;\&nbsp;.02) and hosted the most diverse microbial and invertebrate communities on average. Our findings suggest that as liquid water becomes more available under predicted climate change, soil communities adapted to the hyper-arid landscape will shift toward diverse, wetted soil communities.</p>},
	keywords = {LTER-MCM, climate variation, extreme weather, McMurdo Dry Valleys, microbial community, soil invertebrates},
	issn = {1523-0430},
	doi = {10.1080/15230430.2025.2485283},
	url = {https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15230430.2025.2485283},
	author = {Snyder, Meredith D. and Adams, Byron J. and Borgmeier, Abigail and Jorna, Jesse and Power, Sarah N. and Salvatore, Mark R. and John E. Barrett}
}
@article {4825,
	title = {Glacial legacies: Microbial communities of Antarctic refugia},
	journal = {Biology},
	volume = {11},
	year = {2022},
	month = {10/2022},
	pages = {1440},
	abstract = {<p>In the cold deserts of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV) the suitability of soil for microbial life is determined by both contemporary processes and legacy effects. Climatic changes and accompanying glacial activity have caused local extinctions and lasting geochemical changes to parts of these soil ecosystems over several million years, while areas of refugia may have escaped these disturbances and existed under relatively stable conditions. This study describes the impact of historical glacial and lacustrine disturbance events on microbial communities across the MDV to investigate how this divergent disturbance history influenced the structuring of microbial communities across this otherwise very stable ecosystem. Soil bacterial communities from 17 sites representing either putative refugia or sites disturbed during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (22\&ndash;17 kya) were characterized using 16 S metabarcoding. Regardless of geographic distance, several putative refugia sites at elevations above 600 m displayed highly similar microbial communities. At a regional scale, community composition was found to be influenced by elevation and geographic proximity more so than soil geochemical properties. These results suggest that despite the extreme conditions, diverse microbial communities exist in these putative refugia that have presumably remained undisturbed at least through the LGM. We suggest that similarities in microbial communities can be interpreted as evidence for historical climate legacies on an ecosystem-wide scale.</p>},
	keywords = {LTER-MCM, Antarctica, McMurdo Dry Valleys, metabarcoding, microbial communities, refugia, soil biodiversity},
	doi = {10.3390/biology11101440},
	url = {https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/11/10/1440},
	author = {Jackson, Abigail C. and Jorna, Jesse and Chaston, J and Adams, Byron J.}
}
