Soil microbial diversity and functional ecology of the hyperarid Vestfold Hills is virtually unexplored, whilst previous studies at the Windmill Islands have disclosed a relatively high proportion of novel bacterial phyla. These diverse edaphic habitats are a legacy of age-involving varied geological and glaciological processes. Approximately 100 km to the north lie the Vestfold Hills, a large expanse of low-lying hilly country deeply indented by sea-inlets and lakes. The Windmill Islands, an ice-free region situated near the Australian Casey research station, consists of five major peninsulas and a number of rock-strewn islands. Apart from ice-free patches along the coast, most of the sector is covered by a thick layer of permafrost. Greater understanding of these basic ecological concepts is a pivotal step towards effective conservation management.Įast Antarctica constitutes up to two-thirds of the continent and is home to some of the oldest, coldest and most oligotrophic soils on Earth.
A tale in the desert 8 drivers#
We provide new information on assemblage patterns, environmental drivers and non-random occurrences for Antarctic soil microbiomes, particularly the Vestfold Hills, where basic diversity, ecology and life history strategies of resident microbiota are largely unknown. Eukaryotic and archaeal communities reveal weaker niche-driven signatures accompanied by multimodality, suggesting the emergence of neutrality.
Overall, non-neutral processes appear to structure the polar soil microbiomes studied here, with niche partitioning being particularly strong for bacterial communities at the Windmill Islands. Community richness is largely driven by a variable suite of parameters but robust associations between co-existing members highlight potential interactions and sharing of niche space by diverse taxa from all three microbial domains of life examined. However, intra-region comparisons demonstrate greater homogeneity of soil microbial communities and measured environmental parameters between sites at the Vestfold Hills. Actinobacteria dominated soils in both regions, yet Bacteroidetes were more abundant in the Vestfold Hills compared to the Windmill Islands, which contained a high abundance of novel phyla. Our findings reveal distinct regional differences in phylogenetic composition, abundance and richness amongst microbial taxa. To our knowledge, this is the first microbial biodiversity report on the hyperarid Vestfold Hills soil environment. In this study, we combine multivariate analyses, co-occurrence networks and fitted species abundance distributions on an extensive set of bacterial, micro-eukaryote and archaeal amplicon sequencing data to unravel soil microbiome patterns of nine sites across two east Antarctic regions, the Vestfold Hills and Windmill Islands.
A tale in the desert 8 full#
However, the full scope of biodiversity and the niche-neutral processes underlying these communities remain unclear. Resident soil microbiota play key roles in sustaining the core ecosystem processes of terrestrial Antarctica, often involving unique taxa with novel functional traits.
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