Abstract
Biological characteristics of ice-associated algal communities were studied in Darnley Bay (western Canadian Arctic) during a 2-week period in July 2008 when the landfast ice cover had reached an advanced stage of melt. We found two distinct and separate algal communities: (1) an interior ice community confined to brine channel networks beneath white ice covers; and (2) an ice melt water community in the brackish waters of both surface melt ponds and the layer immediately below the ice cover. Both communities reached maximum chlorophyll a concentrations of about 2.5 mg m−3, but with diatoms dominating the interior ice while flagellates dominated the melt water community. The microflora of each community was diverse, containing both unique and shared algal species, the latter suggesting an initial seeding of the ice melt water by the bottom ice community. Absorption characteristics of the algae indicated the presence of mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs) and carotenoid pigments as a photoprotective strategy against being confined to high-light near-surface layers. Although likely not contributing substantially to total annual primary production, these ice-associated communities may play an important ecological role in the Arctic marine ecosystem, supplying an accessible and stable food source to higher trophic levels during the period of ice melt.
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Acknowledgments
This work is a contribution to the International Polar Year–Circumpolar Flaw Lead system study (IPY–CFL 2008), supported through grants from the Canadian IPY Federal program office, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and numerous international collaborators. Postdoctoral fellowship support was provided from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT) to C.J.M. and the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) to J.K.E. Additional funding was provided from the Canadian Museum of Nature to M.P. The participation of H.H. was jointly facilitated by ARCTOS and ArcticNet, within the IPY-project PanAME funded by the Research Council of Norway. We would like to extend our gratitude to Dr. J.-É. Tremblay’s lab for processing nutrient samples, A. Rossnagel for CTD data and assistance in the field, and to B. Philippe, M. Palmer, A. Sallon, T. Brown, J. Ferland, S. Pineault, J. Gagnon, J. Martin, D. Nguyen, R. Maranger, and the officers and crew of the CCGS Amundsen for logistical and postprocessing support. We gratefully acknowledge K. Meiners and two anonymous reviewers for comments that improved this manuscript.
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This article belongs to the special issue “Circumpolar Flaw Lead Study (CFL)”, coordinated by J. Deming and L. Fortier.
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Mundy, C.J., Gosselin, M., Ehn, J.K. et al. Characteristics of two distinct high-light acclimated algal communities during advanced stages of sea ice melt. Polar Biol 34, 1869–1886 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-011-0998-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-011-0998-x