Using Captain Scott's Discovery specimens to unlock the past: has Antarctic cyanobacterial diversity changed over the last 100 years?

ABSTRACT: Evidence of climate-driven environmental change is increasing in Antarctica, and with it comes concern that this will propagate to impacts on biological communities. Recognition and prediction of change needs to incorporate the extent and timescales over which communities vary under extant conditions. However, few observations of Antarctic microbial communities, which dominate inland habitats, allow this. We therefore carried out the first molecular comparison of Cyanobacteria in historic herbarium microbial mats from freshwater ecosystems on Ross Island and the McMurdo Ice Shelf, collected by Captain R.F. Scott's 'Discovery' Expedition (1902-1903), with modern samples from those areas. Using 16S rRNA gene surveys, we found that modern and historic cyanobacteria assemblages showed some var

SUBMITTER: Jungblut AD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5489731 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature