@article {4941, title = {Biogeographic survey of soil bacterial communities across Antarctica}, journal = {Microbiome}, volume = {12}, year = {2024}, month = {01/2024}, abstract = {

Antarctica and its unique biodiversity are increasingly at risk from the effects of global climate change and other human influences. A significant recent element underpinning strategies for Antarctic conservation has been the development of a system of Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions (ACBRs). The datasets supporting this classification are, however, dominated by eukaryotic taxa, with contributions from the bacterial domain restricted to Actinomycetota and Cyanobacteriota. Nevertheless, the ice-free areas of the Antarctic continent and the sub-Antarctic islands are dominated in terms of diversity by bacteria. Our study aims to generate a comprehensive phylogenetic dataset of Antarctic bacteria with wide geographical coverage on the continent and sub-Antarctic islands, to investigate whether bacterial diversity and distribution is reflected in the current ACBRs.

}, keywords = {LTER-MCM, Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions (ACBRs), Antarctic soil microbiome, bioclimatic variables, biogeography, microbial diversity, regionalization, soils}, doi = {10.1186/s40168-023-01719-3}, url = {https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-023-01719-3}, author = {Varliero, Gilda and Lebre, Pedro H. and Byron Adams and Steven L. Chown and Peter Convey and Dennis, Paul G. and Fan, Dandan and Ferrari, Belinda and Frey, Beat and Hogg, Ian D. and Hopkins, David W. and Kong, Weidong and Makhalanyane, Thulani and Matcher, Gwynneth and Newsham, Kevin K. and Stevens, Mark I. and Weigh, Katherine V. and Cowan, Don A.} } @article {4713, title = {Blowin{\textquoteright} in the wind: Dispersal, structure, and metacommunity dynamics of aeolian diatoms in the McMurdo Sound region, Antarctica}, journal = {Journal of Phycology}, volume = {58}, year = {2022}, month = {02/2022}, pages = {36-54}, abstract = {

Diatom metacommunities are structured by environmental, historical, and spatial factors that are often attributed to organism dispersal. In the McMurdo Sound region (MSR) of Antarctica, wind connects aquatic habitats through delivery of inorganic and organic matter. We evaluated the dispersal of diatoms in aeolian material and its relation to the regional diatom metacommunity using light microscopy and 18S rRNA high-throughput sequencing. The concentration of diatoms ranged from 0 to 8.76 * 106 valves \· g-1 dry aeolian material. Up to 15\% of whole cells contained visible protoplasm, indicating that up to 3.43 * 104 potentially viable individuals could be dispersed in a year to a single 2 cm2\ site. Diatom DNA and RNA was detected at each site, reinforcing the likelihood that we observed dispersal of viable diatoms. Of the 50 known morphospecies in the MSR, 72\% were identified from aeolian material using microscopy. Aeolian community composition varied primarily by site. Meanwhile, each aeolian community was comprised of morphospecies found in aquatic communities from the same lake basin. These results suggest that aeolian diatom dispersal in the MSR is spatially structured, is predominantly local, and connects local aquatic habitats via a shared species pool. Nonetheless, aeolian community structure was distinct from that of aquatic communities, indicating that intrahabitat dispersal and environmental filtering also underlie diatom metacommunity dynamics. The present study confirms that a large number of diatoms are passively dispersed by wind across a landscape characterized by aeolian processes, integrating the regional flora and contributing to metacommunity structure and landscape connectivity.

}, keywords = {LTER-MCM, 18S rRNA, airborne, algae, assembly, Bacillariophyta, biogeography, connectivity, high-throughput sequencing}, issn = {0022-3646}, doi = {10.1111/jpy.13223}, url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpy.13223}, author = {Schulte, Nicholas O. and Khan, Alia L. and Smith, Emma W. and Zoumplis, Angela and Kaul, Drishti and Allen, Andrew E. and Adams, Byron J. and Diane M. McKnight} } @thesis {4835, title = {Effect of climate history on the genetic structure of an Antarctic soil nematode}, volume = {MS}, year = {2022}, month = {12/2022}, school = {Brigham Young University}, type = {Master{\textquoteright}s thesis}, address = {Provo, UT, USA}, abstract = {

Historical climate disturbances such as glacial cycling and fluctuating stream, lake, and sea levels strongly influence the distribution and evolutionary trajectories of Antarctic terrestrial species. Antarctic invertebrates, with limited long-range mobility, including the ubiquitous sentinel nematode species Scottnema lindsayae, are especially sensitive to climate disturbances. We tested hypotheses associated with the historical geographic and population genetic structure of this species as it occurs across the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs) of Antarctica. In order to reconstruct the influence of climate disturbance and ecological conditions on this species, partial mitochondrial COI gene sequences were sequenced and analyzed from individual S. lindsayae collected from sites across the MDVs reflecting a opposing gradients of climate disturbance during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). We found that populations were strongly geomorphic barriers with distinct haplotypes associated with valleys except among valleys that experienced glacial advance and retreat during the LGM. One monophyletic clade corresponds with valley systems that were undisturbed during the LGM indicating putative refugia areas. A second monophyletic clade corresponds to recent dispersal and expansion of evolutionarily younger populations into valleys that were strongly reworked by glacial activity during the LGM. Our work shows that contemporary populations of these animals are strongly structured by prior climate history. Such findings can be useful for interpreting long-term monitoring of demographic shifts of soil organisms in response to changing climate trends in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

}, keywords = {LTER-MCM, Antarctica, biogeography, climate disturbance, evolution, McMurdo Dry Valleys, polar, population genetics}, url = {http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd12622}, author = {Jackson, Abigail C.}, editor = {Adams, Byron J.} } @article {4576, title = {Diatoms define a novel freshwater biogeography of the Antarctic}, journal = {Ecography}, volume = {44}, year = {2021}, month = {01/2021}, pages = {1-13}, abstract = {

Terrestrial biota in the Antarctic are more globally distinct and highly structured biogeographically than previously believed, but information on biogeographic patterns and endemism in freshwater communities is largely lacking. We studied biogeographic patterns of Antarctic freshwater diatoms based on the analysis of species occurrences in a dataset of 439 lakes spread across the Antarctic realm. Highly distinct diatom floras, both in terms of composition and richness, characterize Continental Antarctica, Maritime Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands, with marked biogeographic provincialism in each region. A total of 44\% of all species is estimated to be endemic to the Antarctic, and most of them are confined to a single biogeographic region. The level of endemism significantly increases with increasing latitude and geographic isolation. Our results have implications for conservation planning, and suggest that successful dispersal of freshwater diatoms to and within the Antarctic is limited, fostering the evolution of highly endemic diatom floras.

}, keywords = {LTER-MCM, Antarctica, biogeography, diatoms, endemism, freshwater, lake}, doi = {10.1111/ecog.05374}, url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.05374}, author = {Elie Verleyen and Bart Van de Vijver and Tytgat, Bjorn and Pinseel, Eveline and Hodgson, Dominic A. and Kopalov{\'a}, Kate{\v r}ina and Steven L. Chown and Van Ranst, Eric and Imura, Satoshi and Kudoh, Sakae and Van Nieuwenhuyze, Wim and Sabbe, Koen and Vyverman, Wim} } @phdthesis {4086, title = {Environmental Controls Over the Distribution and Function of Antarctic Soil Bacterial Communities}, volume = {Ph.D.}, year = {2014}, school = {Virginia Tech}, type = {doctoral}, address = {Blacksburg, VA}, abstract = {

Microbial community composition plays a vital role in soil biogeochemical cycling. Information that explains the biogeography of microorganisms is consequently necessary for predicting the timing and magnitude of important ecosystem services mediated by soil biota, such as decomposition and nutrient cycling. Theory developed to explain patterns in plant and animal distributions such as the prevalent relationship between ecosystem productivity and diversity may be successfully extended to microbial systems and accelerate an emerging ecological understanding of the \"unseen majority.\" These considerations suggest a need to define the important mechanisms which affect microbial biogeography as well as the sensitivity of community structure/function to changing climatic or environmental conditions. To this end, my dissertation covers three data chapters in which I have 1) examined patterns in bacterial biogeography using gradients of environmental severity and productivity to identify changes in community diversity (e.g. taxonomic richness) and structure (e.g. similarity); 2) detected potential bacterial ecotypes associated with distinct soil habitats such as those of high alkalinity or electrical conductivity and; 3) measured environmental controls over the function (e.g. primary production, exoenzyme activity) of soil organisms in an environment of severe environmental limitations. Sampling was performed in the polar desert of Antarctica\&$\#$39;s McMurdo Dry Valleys, a model ecosystem which hosts microbially-dominated soil foodwebs and displays heterogeneously distributed soil properties across the landscape. Results for Chapter 2 indicate differential effects of resource availability and geochemical severity on bacterial communities,\ with a significant productivity-diversity relationship that plateaus near the highest observed concentrations of the limiting resource organic carbon (0.30mg C/g soil). Geochemical severity (e.g. pH, electrical conductivity) primarily affected bacterial community similarity and successfully explained the divergent structure of a subset of samples. 16S rRNA amplicon pyrosequencing further revealed in Chapter 3 the identity of specific phyla that preferentially exist within certain habitats (i.e.\ Acidobacteria\ in alkaline soils,\ Nitrospira\ in mesic soils) suggesting the presence of niche specialists and spatial heterogeneity of taxa-specific functions (i.e. nitrite oxidation). Additionally, environmental parameters had different explanatory power towards predicting bacterial richness at varying taxonomic scales, from 57\% of phylum-level richness with pH to 91\% of order- and genus-level richness with moisture. Finally, Chapter 4 details a simultaneous sampling of soil communities and their associated ecosystem functions (primary productivity, enzymatic decomposition) and indicates that the overall organic substrate diversity may be greater in mesic soils where bacterial diversity is also highest, thus a potentially unforeseen driver of community dynamics. I also quantified annual rates of soil production which range between 0.7 - 18.1g C/m2/yr from the more arid to productive soils, respectively. In conclusion, the extension of biogeographical theory for macroorganisms has proven successful and both environmental severity and resource availability have obvious (although different) effects on the diversity and composition of soil microbial communities.

}, keywords = {LTER-MCM, biogeochemistry, biogeography, McMurdo Dry Valleys, microbial ecology, productivity/diversity theory}, url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10919/64417}, author = {Kevin M. Geyer}, editor = {John E. Barrett} }