Marked Succession of Cyanobacterial Communities Following Glacier Retreat in the High Arctic

International audience Cyanobacteria are important colonizers of recently deglaciated proglacial soil but an in-depth investigation of cyanobacterial succession following glacier retreat has not yet been carried out. Here, we report on the successional trajectories of cyanobacterial communities in b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Microbial Ecology
Main Authors: Pessi, Igor, Pushkareva, Ekaterina, Lara, Yannick, Borderie, Fabien, Wilmotte, Annick, Elster, Josef
Other Authors: Laboratoire Chrono-environnement - CNRS - UBFC (UMR 6249) (LCE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Franche-Comté (UFC), Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté COMUE (UBFC)-Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté COMUE (UBFC), InBios-Centre for Protein Engineering, Université de Liège
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: HAL CCSD 2019
Subjects:
cyanobacteria
glacier forefield
high arctic
high-throughput sequencing
primary succession
proglacial soil
[SDE]Environmental Sciences
Arctic
Svalbard
glacier
Online Access:https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02538393
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-018-1203-3
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Summary:International audience Cyanobacteria are important colonizers of recently deglaciated proglacial soil but an in-depth investigation of cyanobacterial succession following glacier retreat has not yet been carried out. Here, we report on the successional trajectories of cyanobacterial communities in biological soil crusts (BSCs) along a 100-year deglaciation gradient in three glacier forefields in central Svalbard, High Arctic. Distance from the glacier terminus was used as a proxy for soil age (years since deglaciation), and cyanobacterial abundance and community composition were evaluated by epifluorescence microscopy and pyrosequencing of partial 16S rRNA gene sequences, respectively. Succession was characterized by a decrease in phylotype richness and a marked shift in community structure, resulting in a clear separation between early (10-20years since deglaciation), mid (30-50years), and late (80-100years) communities. Changes in cyanobacterial community structure were mainly connectedwith soil age and associated shifts in soil chemical composition (mainly moisture, SOC, SMN, K, and Na concentrations). Phylotypes associated with early communities were related either to potentially novel lineages (<97.5% similar to sequences currently available in GenBank) or lineages predominantly restricted to polar and alpine biotopes, suggesting that the initial colonization of proglacial soil is accomplished by cyanobacteria transported from nearby glacial environments. Late communities, on the other hand, included more widely distributed genotypes, which appear to establish only after the microenvironment has been modified by the pioneering taxa.

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