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The prokaryotic community in an extreme Antarctic environment: the brines of Boulder Clay lakes (Northern Victoria Land)

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Abstract

During summer 2014, three hypersaline brines were discovered in two frozen lakes of Boulder Clay (Northern Victoria Valley, Antarctica). Ongoing research seeks to gain novel insights on the microbial ecology of such environments, in order to further the understanding of life adaptation to extreme conditions. To this aim, the abundance of prokaryotic cells (including cell morphologies and size for biomass conversion), the amount of viable cells (in terms of membrane-intact cells and respiring cells), the viral count, the physiological profiles at community level and the main microbial enzymatic activities were described. The brines differed each other in terms of prokaryotic cells’ abundance, size, and viability as well as viral abundance. Cell morphotypes and metabolic responses also varied among the brine samples. Underground interconnections were likely to occur, with the microbial community becoming more abundant and structured to better exploit the limited resource availability. Overall, complex interactions among multiple environmental factors, including marine water origin, depth horizon, isolation time of the brines, and climatic variations, reflected on the microbial community distribution patterns and highlighted the need to preserve these niches of extreme life.

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Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank the Associated Editor for his punctual and precise advice and the reviewers for their relevant suggestions. This research was supported by grants from the National Antarctic Research Program (PNRA), the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (Research Project PNRA 2013/AZ1.05, PNRA 2016_00194-A1; PNRA 2018_00186-E) and from the National Council of Research in the frame of the Short Term Mobility program (STM AMMCNT. CNR protocol n. 0058167–02/09/2015 and STM AMMCNT. CNR protocol n.0070784- 15/10/2019). Dr. Anderson S. Cabral was funded by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. The authors thank Dr. Michele Dalle Fratte for his role in the drilling and sampling procedures as well as all the staff at “Mario Zucchelli” Station in Antarctica who made this research possible, thanks to his logistic help and support. Thanks are also due to Dr. Anderson Aquino, Laboratory of Hidrobiologia of UFRJ (Brazil) for his technical assistance in the flow cytometry analyses.

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  1. CNR, Institute of Polar Sciences, Spianata S. Raineri 86, 98122, Messina, Italy

    Maurizio Azzaro, Giovanna Maimone, Rosabruna La Ferla, Alessandro Cosenza, Alessandro Ciro Rappazzo & Gabriella Caruso

  2. UFRJ, Institute of Biology, Av. Prof. Rodolpho Rocco 211, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Rodolfo Paranhos & Anderson S. Cabral

  3. UFRJ, Institute of Microbiology Paulo de Góes, Av. Carlos Chagas Filho, 373, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Anderson S. Cabral

  4. Department of Mathematics and Geosciencies, University of Trieste, Via Weiss 2, 34128, Trieste, Italy

    Emanuele Forte

  5. Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences, University of Insubria, Via J.H. Dunant 3, 21100, Varèse, Italy

    Mauro Guglielmin

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Azzaro, M., Maimone, G., La Ferla, R. et al. The prokaryotic community in an extreme Antarctic environment: the brines of Boulder Clay lakes (Northern Victoria Land). Hydrobiologia 848, 1837–1857 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-021-04557-2

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