Microbial Community Diversity Response to a Changing Arctic Ocean ...

• Main Author: Universite Laval
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: MGnify 2019
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Beaufort Sea; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.15468/otrkaj; https://www.gbif.org/dataset/693d4827-5e55-4cef-9ea7-d6194a5fb1d9

Increasing global temperatures are having a profound impact in the Arctic, including the dramatic loss of multiyear sea ice in 2007 that has continued to the present. The majority of life in the Arctic is microbial and the consequences of climate-mediated changes on microbial marine food webs, which are responsible for biogeochemical cycling and support higher trophic levels, are unknown. We examined microbial communities over time by using high-throughput sequencing of microbial DNA collected between 2003 and 2010 from the subsurface chlorophyll maximum (SCM) layer of the Beaufort Sea (Canadian Arctic). We found that overall this layer has freshened and concentrations of nitrate, the limiting nutrient for photosynthetic production in Arctic seas, have decreased. We compared microbial communities from before and after the record September 2007 sea ice minimum and detected significant differences in communities from all three domains of life. In particular, there were significant changes in species ...