Microbial community composition of terrestrial habitats in East Antarctica with a focus on microphototrophs

Ekaterina Pushkareva; Josef Elster; Sakae Kudoh; Satoshi Imura; Burkhard Becker

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2023.1323148

Microbial community composition of terrestrial habitats in East Antarctica with a focus on microphototrophs

Front Microbiol. 2024 Jan 5:14:1323148. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1323148. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ekaterina Pushkareva¹, Josef Elster^{2

3}, Sakae Kudoh^{4

5}, Satoshi Imura^{4

5}, Burkhard Becker¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology, Botanical Institute, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
² Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Třeboň, Czechia.
³ Centre for Polar Ecology, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czechia.
⁴ Department of Polar Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, Tachikawa, Japan.
⁵ National Institute of Polar Research, Research Organization of Information and Systems, Tachikawa, Japan.

Abstract

The Antarctic terrestrial environment harbors a diverse community of microorganisms, which have adapted to the extreme conditions. The aim of this study was to describe the composition of microbial communities in a diverse range of terrestrial environments (various biocrusts and soils, sands from ephemeral wetlands, biofilms, endolithic and hypolithic communities) in East Antarctica using both molecular and morphological approaches. Amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene revealed the dominance of Chloroflexi, Cyanobacteria and Firmicutes, while sequencing of the 18S rRNA gene showed the prevalence of Alveolata, Chloroplastida, Metazoa, and Rhizaria. This study also provided a comprehensive assessment of the microphototrophic community revealing a diversity of cyanobacteria and eukaryotic microalgae in various Antarctic terrestrial samples. Filamentous cyanobacteria belonging to the orders Oscillatoriales and Pseudanabaenales dominated prokaryotic community, while members of Trebouxiophyceae were the most abundant representatives of eukaryotes. In addition, the co-occurrence analysis showed a prevalence of positive correlations with bacterial taxa frequently co-occurring together.

Keywords: East Antarctica; amplicon sequencing; cyanobacteria; eukaryotic microalgae; terrestrial environment.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. EP and BB were supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the (project BE1779/23-1) which is part of the Priority Program 1158 ‘Antarctic Research’. JE was funded by the Czech Science foundation (project 22-08680 L) and by the Czech Academy of Sciences (long-term research development project No. RVO 67985939). SK and SI were supported by JST SPRING, grant number JPMJSP2104, a grant from the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI and, an NIPR publication subsidy. We acknowledge support for the Article Processing Charge from the DFG (German Research Foundation, 491454339).