Abstract
The James Ross archipelago houses numerous lakes and ponds. In this region, a vast diatom and cyanobacterial variety has been reported; however, the prokaryotic diversity in microbial mats from these lakes remains poorly explored. Here, a high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene in microbial mats from Lake Bart-Roja in James Ross Island and lakes Pan Negro and North Pan Negro located in Vega Island was performed. Combined with mineralogical and environmental characteristics, we analyzed the diversity and structure of the microbial communities. Sequences assigned to Archaea were extremely low, while Bacteria domain prevailed with the abundance of Proteobacteria (mostly Betaproteobacteriales) followed by Bacteroidetes, Verrucomicrobia, Firmicutes, and Cyanobacteria. Local environmental conditions, such as conductivity and Eh, provided differential microbial assemblages that might have implications in the oligotrophic status of the lakes. Consequently, a clear segregation at the family level was observed. In this sense, the assigned diversity was related to taxa recognized as denitrifiers and sulfur oxidizers. Particularly, in Lake Pan Negro sulfur-reducing and methanogenic representatives were also found and positively correlate with alkalinity and water depth. Moreover, Deinococcus-Thermus was observed in Lake Bart-Roja, while Melainabacteria (Cyanobacteria)—poorly reported in Antarctic mats—was detected in Lake Pan Negro. Epsilonbacteraeota was exclusively found in this lake, suggesting new potential phylotypes. This study contributes to the understanding of the diversity, composition, and structure of Antarctic benthic microbial ecosystems and provides highly valuable information, which can be used as a proxy to evaluate environmental changes affecting Antarctic microbiota.
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Data availability
The sequences generated during the current study are available at ENA (Project accession number: PRJEB43275).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dirección Nacional del Antártico (DNA) and Instituto Antártico Argentino (IAA) for the financial and logistical support in Antarctica. We would like to thank Dr. Laura Borgnino (CICTERRA) for her kind support and cooperation. We also wish to thank Dr. Gabriela Paglini and Dr. Mariano Bisbal from the Instituto de Investigación Medica Mercedes y Martin Ferreyra (INIMEC-CONCET) for facilities assistance in DNA extraction and quantification. Finally, the authors also appreciate the contributions of Dr. Dieter Piepenburg and two anonymous reviewers that improved the work.
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This work was supported by a bursary from Antarctic Science Ltd; by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (ANPCYT project PICT 2017-2026); by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET, Argentina, projects PIP 11220170100088CO and PUE-CICTERRA 2016); and by the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (SeCyT, UNC project 336-20180100385-CB).
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ECM and KL conceived this work. GCF, ESR and ECM performed the experiments and analyzed the data. PV, SHC and JML performed the sample collection and PV interpreted the geochemistry data. ECM, GCF, and KL wrote the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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Fernández, G.C., Lecomte, K., Vignoni, P. et al. Prokaryotic diversity and biogeochemical characteristics of benthic microbial ecosystems from James Ross Archipelago (West Antarctica). Polar Biol 45, 405–418 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-021-02997-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-021-02997-z