Microbial Diversity of Pinnacle and Conical Microbial Mats in the Perennially Ice-Covered Lake Untersee, East Antarctica.

ABSTRACT: Antarctic perennially ice-covered lakes provide a stable low-disturbance environment where complex microbially mediated structures can grow. Lake Untersee, an ultra-oligotrophic lake in East Antarctica, has the lake floor covered in benthic microbial mat communities, where laminated organo-sedimentary structures form with three distinct, sympatric morphologies: small, elongated cuspate pinnacles, large complex cones and flat mats. We examined the diversity of prokaryotes and eukaryotes in pinnacles, cones and flat microbial mats using high-throughput sequencing of 16S and 18S rRNA genes and assessed how microbial composition may underpin the formation of these distinct macroscopic mat morphologies under the same environmental conditions. Our analysis identified distinct clustering of micro

SUBMITTER: Greco C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7759091 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature