Hidden biofilms in a far northern lake and implications for the changing Arctic.

ABSTRACT: Shallow lakes are common across the Arctic landscape and their ecosystem productivity is often dominated by benthic, cyanobacterial biofilms. Many of these water bodies freeze to the bottom and are biologically inactive during winter, but full freeze-up is becoming less common with Arctic warming. Here we analyzed the microbiome structure of newly discovered biofilms at the deepest site of a perennially ice-covered High Arctic lake as a model of polar microbial communities that remain unfrozen throughout the year. Biofilms were also sampled from the lake's shallow moat region that melts out and refreezes to the bottom annually. Using high throughput small subunit ribosomal RNA sequencing, we found more taxonomic richness in Bacteria, Archaea and microbial eukaryotes in the perennially unfr

SUBMITTER: Mohit V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5500582 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature