Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica.
The soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica are an extreme polar desert, inhabited exclusively by microscopic taxa. This region is on the threshold of anticipated climate change, with glacial melt, permafrost thaw, and the melting of massive buried ice increasing liquid water availability and m...
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ftunicolboulder:oai:scholar.colorado.edu:cven_facpapers-1004 2023-05-15T13:49:40+02:00 Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Buelow, Heather N Winter, Ara S Van Horn, David J Barrett, John E Gooseff, Michael N Schwartz, Egbert Takacs-Vesbach, Cristina D 2016-01-01T08:00:00Z application/pdf https://scholar.colorado.edu/cven_facpapers/3 https://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=cven_facpapers unknown CU Scholar https://scholar.colorado.edu/cven_facpapers/3 https://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=cven_facpapers Civil Engineering Faculty Contributions text 2016 ftunicolboulder 2018-10-07T09:06:44Z The soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica are an extreme polar desert, inhabited exclusively by microscopic taxa. This region is on the threshold of anticipated climate change, with glacial melt, permafrost thaw, and the melting of massive buried ice increasing liquid water availability and mobilizing soil nutrients. Experimental water and organic matter (OM) amendments were applied to investigate how these climate change effects may impact the soil communities. To identify active taxa and their functions, total community RNA transcripts were sequenced and annotated, and amended soils were compared with unamended control soils using differential abundance and expression analyses. Overall, taxonomic diversity declined with amendments of water and OM. The domain Bacteria increased with both amendments while Eukaryota declined from 38% of all taxa in control soils to 8 and 11% in water and OM amended soils, respectively. Among bacterial phyla, Actinobacteria (59%) dominated water-amended soils and Firmicutes (45%) dominated OM amended soils. Three bacterial phyla (Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Firmicutes) were primarily responsible for the observed positive functional responses, while eukaryotic taxa experienced the majority (27 of 34) of significant transcript losses. These results indicated that as climate changes in this region, a replacement of endemic taxa adapted to dry, oligotrophic conditions by generalist, copiotrophic taxa is likely. Text Antarc* Antarctica Ice McMurdo Dry Valleys permafrost polar desert University of Colorado, Boulder: CU Scholar McMurdo Dry Valleys |
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University of Colorado, Boulder: CU Scholar |
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The soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica are an extreme polar desert, inhabited exclusively by microscopic taxa. This region is on the threshold of anticipated climate change, with glacial melt, permafrost thaw, and the melting of massive buried ice increasing liquid water availability and mobilizing soil nutrients. Experimental water and organic matter (OM) amendments were applied to investigate how these climate change effects may impact the soil communities. To identify active taxa and their functions, total community RNA transcripts were sequenced and annotated, and amended soils were compared with unamended control soils using differential abundance and expression analyses. Overall, taxonomic diversity declined with amendments of water and OM. The domain Bacteria increased with both amendments while Eukaryota declined from 38% of all taxa in control soils to 8 and 11% in water and OM amended soils, respectively. Among bacterial phyla, Actinobacteria (59%) dominated water-amended soils and Firmicutes (45%) dominated OM amended soils. Three bacterial phyla (Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Firmicutes) were primarily responsible for the observed positive functional responses, while eukaryotic taxa experienced the majority (27 of 34) of significant transcript losses. These results indicated that as climate changes in this region, a replacement of endemic taxa adapted to dry, oligotrophic conditions by generalist, copiotrophic taxa is likely. |
format |
Text |
author |
Buelow, Heather N Winter, Ara S Van Horn, David J Barrett, John E Gooseff, Michael N Schwartz, Egbert Takacs-Vesbach, Cristina D |
spellingShingle |
Buelow, Heather N Winter, Ara S Van Horn, David J Barrett, John E Gooseff, Michael N Schwartz, Egbert Takacs-Vesbach, Cristina D Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. |
author_facet |
Buelow, Heather N Winter, Ara S Van Horn, David J Barrett, John E Gooseff, Michael N Schwartz, Egbert Takacs-Vesbach, Cristina D |
author_sort |
Buelow, Heather N |
title |
Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. |
title_short |
Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. |
title_full |
Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. |
title_fullStr |
Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. |
title_full_unstemmed |
Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. |
title_sort |
microbial community responses to increased water and organic matter in the arid soils of the mcmurdo dry valleys, antarctica. |
publisher |
CU Scholar |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
https://scholar.colorado.edu/cven_facpapers/3 https://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=cven_facpapers |
geographic |
McMurdo Dry Valleys |
geographic_facet |
McMurdo Dry Valleys |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctica Ice McMurdo Dry Valleys permafrost polar desert |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctica Ice McMurdo Dry Valleys permafrost polar desert |
op_source |
Civil Engineering Faculty Contributions |
op_relation |
https://scholar.colorado.edu/cven_facpapers/3 https://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=cven_facpapers |
_version_ |
1766251936447725568 |