Microbial Community Responses to Increased Water and Organic Matter in the Arid Soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica.

ABSTRACT: The soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica are an extreme polar desert, inhabited exclusively by microscopic taxa. This region is on the threshold of anticipated climate change, with glacial melt, permafrost thaw, and the melting of massive buried ice increasing liquid water availability and mobilizing soil nutrients. Experimental water and organic matter (OM) amendments were applied to investigate how these climate change effects may impact the soil communities. To identify active taxa and their functions, total community RNA transcripts were sequenced and annotated, and amended soils were compared with unamended control soils using differential abundance and expression analyses. Overall, taxonomic diversity declined with amendments of water and OM. The domain Bacteria increased wit

SUBMITTER: Buelow HN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4947590 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature