@article {5008, title = {A comprehensive survey of soil microbial diversity across the Antarctic continent}, journal = {Polar Biology}, volume = {48}, year = {2025}, month = {02/2025}, abstract = {

Antarctic soils are unique from those found nearly anywhere else on Earth yet can still harbor a broad diversity of microorganisms able to tolerate the challenging conditions typical of the continent. For these reasons, microbiologists have been drawn to Antarctica for decades. However, our understanding of which microbes thrive in Antarctic soils and how they to do so remains limited. To help resolve these knowledge gaps, we analyzed a collection of 200 archived Antarctic soils\—from Livingston Island on the Antarctic Peninsula to Cape Hallett in northern Victoria Land. We analyzed the prokaryotic and fungal communities in these soils using both cultivation-independent marker gene sequencing and cultivation-dependent approaches (microbial isolation), paired with extensive soil geochemical analyses. Our cultivation-independent analyses indicate that colder, saltier, and drier soils harbor less diverse communities of bacteria and fungi, distinct from those found in soils with less challenging conditions. We also built a culture collection from a subset of these soils that encompasses more than 50 bacterial and fungal genera, including cold-tolerant organisms, such as \<i\>Cryobacterium\</i\> and \<i\>Cryomyces\</i\>. By directly comparing the diversity of our cultured isolates against our cultivation-independent data, we show that many of the more abundant Antarctic taxa are not readily cultivated and highlight bacterial and fungal taxa that should be the focus of future cultivation efforts. Together, we hope that our collection of isolates, the comprehensive data compiled from the cultivation-independent analyses, and our geochemical analyses will serve as a community resource to accelerate the study of Antarctic soil microbes.

}, keywords = {LTER-MCM, Antarctica, bacteria, fungi, microbial ecology, soils}, issn = {0722-4060}, doi = {10.1007/s00300-025-03372-y}, url = {https://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00300-025-03372-y}, author = {Dragone, Nicholas B. and Childress, Mary K. and Vanderburgh, Caihong and Willmore, Rachel and Hogg, Ian D. and Sancho, Leopoldo G. and Charles K. Lee and John E. Barrett and Quandt, C. Alisha and LeMonte, Joshua J. and Adams, Byron J. and Noah Fierer} } @article {5020, title = {Three new Pseudogymnoascus species (Pseudeurotiaceae, Thelebolales) described from Antarctic soils}, journal = {IMA Fungus}, volume = {16}, year = {2025}, month = {03/2025}, abstract = {

The genus Pseudogymnoascus includes several species frequently isolated from extreme environments worldwide, including cold environments such as Antarctica. This study describes three new species of Pseudogymnoascus\—P. russus sp. nov., P. irelandiae sp. nov., and P. ramosus sp. nov.\—isolated from Antarctic soils. These species represent the first Pseudogymnoascus taxa to be formally described from Antarctic soil samples, expanding our understanding of fungal biodiversity in this extreme environment. Microscopic descriptions of asexual structures from living cultures, along with measurements of cultural characteristics and growth on various media types at different temperatures, identify three distinct new species. In addition, phylogenetic analyses based on five gene regions (ITS, LSU, MCM7, RPB2, TEF1) and whole-genome proteomes place these new species within three distinct previously described clades: P. irelandiae in clade K, P. ramosus in clade Q, and P. russus in clade B. These results provide further evidence of the extensive undescribed diversity of Pseudogymnoascus in high-latitude soils. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on Antarctic mycology and the broader ecology of psychrophilic and psychrotolerant fungi.

}, keywords = {LTER-MCM, Antarctic microbial diversity, new species, phylogenetics, psychrophilic fungi, psychrotolerance, taxonomy, whole genome assembly}, issn = {2210-6340}, doi = {10.3897/imafungus.16.142219}, url = {https://imafungus.pensoft.net/article/142219/}, author = {Childress, Mary K. and Dragone, Nicholas B. and Young, Benjamin D. and Adams, Byron J. and Noah Fierer and Quandt, C. Alisha} }