Abstract
The diversity of highly active bacterial communities in cryoconite holes on three Arctic glaciers in Svalbard was investigated using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) of the 16S rRNA locus. Construction and sequencing of clone libraries allowed several members of these communities to be identified, with Proteobacteria being the dominant one, followed by Cyanobacteria and Bacteroidetes. T-RFLP data revealed significantly different communities in holes on the (cold) valley glacier Austre Brøggerbreen relative to two adjacent (polythermal) valley glaciers, Midtre Lovénbreen and Vestre Brøggerbreen. These population compositions correlate with differences in organic matter content, temperature and the metabolic activity of microbial communities concerned. No within-glacier spatial patterns were observed in the communities identified over the 2-year period and with the 1 km-spaced sampling. We infer that surface hydrology is an important factor in the development of cryoconite bacterial communities.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to express our gratitude for the support provided by the Ny Ã…lesund community, especially Nick Cox, Rick Atkinson and Rob Smith at the NERC Arctic Research Station. This study was supported by Grants from NERC (NERC NE/D007321/1; NERC NE/G00496X/1) and the Royal Society (RS 2006/R2) to the authors, a PhD scholarship to AE from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (Mantais) and funding from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW) to BS. We thank Dr Tim James and the SLICES project (NERC NE/B505203/1), as well as Dr David Rippin and Dr Jack Kohler for providing GIS mapping data; Dr David Ratkowsky and Dr Gustaf Hendeby for discussions regarding multivariate data analysis; Tommy Ridgeway of IGES for preparing thin sections of cryoconite; and Hilary Worgan and Beatriz Macias of IBERS for assistance with T-RFLP.
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Edwards, A., Anesio, A., Rassner, S. et al. Possible interactions between bacterial diversity, microbial activity and supraglacial hydrology of cryoconite holes in Svalbard. ISME J 5, 150–160 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2010.100
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2010.100
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