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Background: Antarctica and its unique biodiversity are increasingly at risk from the effects of global climate change and other human influences. A significant recent element underpinning strategies for Antarctic conservation has been the development of a system of Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions (ACBRs). The datasets supporting this classification are, however, dominated by eukaryotic taxa, with contributions from the bacterial domain restricted to Actinomycetota and Cyanobacteriota. Nevertheless, the ice-free areas of the Antarctic continent and the sub-Antarctic islands are dominated in terms of diversity by bacteria. Our study aims to generate a comprehensive phylogenetic dataset of Antarctic bacteria with wide geographical coverage on the continent and sub-Antarctic islands, to investigate whether bacterial diversity and distribution is reflected in the current ACBRs., Results: Soil bacterial diversity and community composition did not fully conform with the ACBR classification. Although 19% of the variability was explained by this classification, the largest differences in bacterial community composition were between the broader continental and maritime Antarctic regions, where a degree of structural overlapping within continental and maritime bacterial communities was apparent, not fully reflecting the division into separate ACBRs. Strong divergence in soil bacterial community composition was also apparent between the Antarctic/sub-Antarctic islands and the Antarctic mainland. Bacterial communities were partially shaped by bioclimatic conditions, with 28% of dominant genera showing habitat preferences connected to at least one of the bioclimatic variables included in our analyses. These genera were also reported as indicator taxa for the ACBRs., Conclusions: Overall, our data indicate that the current ACBR subdivision of the Antarctic continent does not fully reflect bacterial distribution and diversity in Antarctica. We observed considerable overlap in the structure of soil bacterial communities within the maritime Antarctic region and within the continental Antarctic region. Our results also suggest that bacterial communities might be impacted by regional climatic and other environmental changes. The dataset developed in this study provides a comprehensive baseline that will provide a valuable tool for biodiversity conservation efforts on the continent. Further studies are clearly required, and we emphasize the need for more extensive campaigns to systematically sample and characterize Antarctic and sub-Antarctic soil microbial communities. Video Abstract., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Abiotic factors are major determinants of soil animal distributions and their dominant role is pronounced in extreme ecosystems, with biotic interactions seemingly playing a minor role. We modelled co-occurrence and distribution of the three nematode species that dominate the soil food web of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Antarctica). Abiotic factors, other biotic groups, and autocorrelation all contributed to structuring nematode species distributions. However, after removing their effects, we found that the presence of the most abundant nematode species greatly, and negatively, affected the probability of detecting one of the other two species. We observed similar patterns in relative abundances for two out of three pairs of species. Harsh abiotic conditions alone are insufficient to explain contemporary nematode distributions whereas the role of negative biotic interactions has been largely underestimated in soil. The future challenge is to understand how the effects of global change on biotic interactions will alter species coexistence., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Rising global temperatures may increase the rates of soil organic matter decomposition by heterotrophic microorganisms, potentially accelerating climate change further by releasing additional carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere. However, the possibility that microbial community responses to prolonged warming may modify the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration creates large uncertainty in the strength of this positive feedback. Both compensatory responses (decreasing temperature sensitivity of soil respiration in the long-term) and enhancing responses (increasing temperature sensitivity) have been reported, but the mechanisms underlying these responses are poorly understood. In this study, microbial biomass, community structure and the activities of dehydrogenase and β-glucosidase enzymes were determined for 18 soils that had previously demonstrated either no response or varying magnitude of enhancing or compensatory responses of temperature sensitivity of heterotrophic microbial respiration to prolonged cooling. The soil cooling approach, in contrast to warming experiments, discriminates between microbial community responses and the consequences of substrate depletion, by minimising changes in substrate availability. The initial microbial community composition, determined by molecular analysis of soils showing contrasting respiration responses to cooling, provided evidence that the magnitude of enhancing responses was partly related to microbial community composition. There was also evidence that higher relative abundance of saprophytic Basidiomycota may explain the compensatory response observed in one soil, but neither microbial biomass nor enzymatic capacity were significantly affected by cooling. Our findings emphasise the key importance of soil microbial community responses for feedbacks to global change, but also highlight important areas where our understanding remains limited., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica are an extreme polar desert. Mineral soils support subsurface microbial communities and translucent rocks support development of hypolithic communities on ventral surfaces in soil contact. Despite significant research attention, relatively little is known about taxonomic and functional diversity or their inter-relationships. Here we report a combined diversity and functional interrogation for soil and hypoliths of the Miers Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. The study employed 16S rRNA fingerprinting and high throughput sequencing combined with the GeoChip functional microarray. The soil community was revealed as a highly diverse reservoir of bacterial diversity dominated by actinobacteria. Hypolithic communities were less diverse and dominated by cyanobacteria. Major differences in putative functionality were that soil communities displayed greater diversity in stress tolerance and recalcitrant substrate utilization pathways, whilst hypolithic communities supported greater diversity of nutrient limitation adaptation pathways. A relatively high level of functional redundancy in both soil and hypoliths may indicate adaptation of these communities to fluctuating environmental conditions.

In contrast to the situation in plants inhabiting most of the world's ecosystems, mycorrhizal fungi are usually absent from roots of the only two native vascular plant species of maritime Antarctica, Deschampsia antarctica and Colobanthus quitensis. Instead, a range of ascomycete fungi, termed dark septate endophytes (DSEs), frequently colonise the roots of these plant species. We demonstrate that colonisation of Antarctic vascular plants by DSEs facilitates not only the acquisition of organic nitrogen as early protein breakdown products, but also as non‐proteinaceous d‐amino acids and their short peptides, accumulated in slowly‐decomposing organic matter, such as moss peat. Our findings suggest that, in a warming maritime Antarctic, this symbiosis has a key role in accelerating the replacement of formerly dominant moss communities by vascular plants, and in increasing the rate at which ancient carbon stores laid down as moss peat over centuries or millennia are returned to the atmosphere as CO2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gelifluction, thixotropy and yield stress were measured from < 5 g soil samples taken from Signy, Alectoria, Greenwich, Wiencke and Livingston islands in the maritime Antarctic using a temperature-controlled rotational rheometer. The small sample size that this method permitted is compatible with sampling from sensitive sample locations. An oscillating 10 Pa shear stress was applied to samples at -0.5 kPa water potential. Two freeze-thaw cycles had temperature ramps from 5°C to -10°C over 2 h, followed by -10°C to 5°C over 2 h and finally at 5°C for 1 h. At freezing onset, the shear modulus, G, dropped to 4-50 per cent of thawed G, with no differences between locations. At thawing onset, G dropped to 8-32 per cent of thawed G, with significant differences between locations ( P < 0.001). Thixotropy was then measured by applying a 2 kPa oscillating shear stress for 10 min, followed by relaxation at 10 Pa for 2 h. The increased shear stress caused G to drop to less than 8 per cent of the pre-stressed value, with no difference between locations. After 0.1 and 2 h, G was 18-65 per cent and 31-82 per cent of the pre-stressed value, respectively. A shear ramp determined yield stresses ranging from 494-2217 Pa. These findings demonstrate the potential risk of more frequent freeze-thaw cycles or the occurrence of thawed soil to the stability of polar soils. Gelifluction through more frequent freeze-thaw cycles could result in increased slope movement, whereas thixotropy caused by trampling of thawed soils could exacerbate mechanical damage of surface soils. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warming-induced release of CO2 from the large carbon (C) stores in arctic soils could accelerate climate change. However, declines in the response of soil respiration to warming in long-term experiments suggest that microbial activity acclimates to temperature, greatly reducing the potential for enhanced C losses. As reduced respiration rates with time could be equally caused by substrate depletion, evidence for thermal acclimation remains controversial. To overcome this problem, we carried out a cooling experiment with soils from arctic Sweden. If acclimation causes the reduction in soil respiration observed after experimental warming, then it should subsequently lead to an increase in respiration rates after cooling. We demonstrate that thermal acclimation did not occur following cooling. Rather, during the 90 days after cooling, a further reduction in the soil respiration rate was observed, which was only reversed by extended re-exposure to warmer temperatures. We conclude that over the time scale of a few weeks to months, warming-induced changes in the microbial community in arctic soils will amplify the instantaneous increase in the rates of CO2 production and thus enhance C losses potentially accelerating the rate of 21st century climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nostoc commune Vaucher (a cyanobacterium) is a very conspicuous terrestrial primary producer in Victoria Land, continental Antarctica. Because polar ecosystems are considered to be especially sensitive to environmental changes, understanding the environmental constraints on net carbon (C) fixation by N. commune is necessary to determine the effects of environmental changes on the ecological functioning of ice-free areas of the continent. A model describing net C fixation in terrestrial populations of N. commune in an Antarctic dry valley was constructed using field and laboratory measurements in which N. commune colonies were exposed to different combinations of incident irradiance (400–700 nm), temperature, and degree of desiccation. For desiccated N. commune mats with water content ≤ 30% saturation, net C fixation was highly variable between replicates and could not be modelled. However, for colonies at > 30% saturation, rates of net C fixation and dark respiration depended strongly on irradiance and temperature. Net C fixation reached a maximum rate of 21.6 μg C m− 2 s− 1 at irradiance of approximately 250 μmol m− 2 s− 1 and the optimum temperature of 20.5 °C. Agreement between predicted short-term net C fixation and field and laboratory measurements allowed estimation of total seasonal fixation, using previously published environmental data. Annual net C fixation was estimated in the range 14.5–21.0 g C fixed m− 2 Nostoc mat, depending on year/season. Estimates for different seasons correlated with thermal time (accumulated hours above 0 °C during the year) rather than irradiance, in contrast to communities in local lacustrine environments, where irradiance is the main driver of primary productivity. In the terrestrial habitat, N. commune appears to compromise between an ability to capitalize on short periods of higher temperature and efficient utilization of lower irradiance at low temperature. The relationship between thermal time and net annual C fixation by N. commune is strongly linear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lignin is a major determinant of the decomposition of plant materials in soils. Advances in transgenic technology have led to the possibility of modifying lignin to improve the pulping properties of plant materials for papermaking. Previous studies have shown that lignin modifications also affect the rate of plant material decay in soil. The aim of this work was to investigate short-term changes in soil microbial community structures when tobacco residues with reduced activity of enzymes in the monolignol pathway decompose. The residues from lignin-modified plants all decomposed faster than unmodified plant materials. The relative proportions of some of the structural groups of microbial phospholipid fatty acids were affected by genetic modifications, especially the proportion of double unsaturated chain fatty acids, indicative of fungi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

β-Glucosidase is involved in the degradation of cellulose in soils and has potential for monitoring biological soil quality. We assayed β-glucosidase activity in 29 permanent grassland soils from England and Wales with contrasting physico-chemical and biological properties (clay content 22–68%; total carbon 29–80 mg g−1; microbial carbon 412–3412 μg g−1). Substrate induced β-glucosidase activity ranged between 1.12 and 6.12 μmol para-nitrophenol g−1 soil h−1 and was positively correlated with concentrations of clay, total carbon and microbial carbon. This suggests that substrate-induced β-glucosidase activity is an integrative measure of physico-chemical and biological soil properties and may have applications in monitoring biological soil quality. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Bradford et al. (2008) conclude that thermal adaptation will reduce the response of soil microbial respiration to rising global temperatures. However, we question both the methods used to calculate mass-specific respiration rates and the interpretation of the results. No clear evidence of thermal adaptation reducing soil microbial activity was produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Respiratory denitrification is controlled by a number of environmental and soil factors including pH, but some of the interactions between pH and denitrification in soil are still uncertain. The objective of the present study was to assess the relationship between natural soil pH and denitrifying enzyme activity (DEA), to investigate the impact of two different techniques used for determining of potential denitrification, namely short-term DEA and the long-term denitrification potential (DP), on resulting pH optimum, especially with respect to the length of measurement, and to elucidate the effect of soil pH on the nature of denitrification products (N2O, N2). For this purpose, five mineral soils similar in a texture but differing in pH, were investigated. In addition to examining the soils in their natural pH values, pHs were adjusted by amendment of sulphuric acid or sodium hydroxide solutions prior to DEA or DP determination. The study showed that there was no simple relationship between DEA and soil pH, as very high DEA was found both in acid and alkaline soil. The study also indicated that the populations of soil denitrifiers were adapted to prevailing natural soil pH in the sense that they exhibited the highest DEA at or near natural soil pH (in experiments where the pH was adjusted to values from about 4 to 11 before DEA determination). Suppression of nitrate reductase activity by introducing nitrite instead of nitrate as an electron acceptor had no effect on this interaction between the DEA and soil pH. If the soil incubation was prolonged under optimum conditions for denitrification (surplus of nitrate or nitrite and available carbon, very low partial pressure of O2) and DP was estimated, the optimum pH for evolution of denitrification products was shifted towards neutrality. It is proposed that this is either due to the development of a community of denitrifiers which can grow better at the neutral pH or due to accommodation of the existing populations to new conditions. The shift in pH optimum occurred after about 12 h, but it took about 1–2 days to fully appear. In agreement with previous studies, it was confirmed that at pH above 7, N2 is much more important denitrification product than N2O. The study also suggests that the expressions like optimum pH for denitrification should be avoided, as different denitrification characteristics obtained using different methodology can be quite differently related to the soil reaction. Such general expression should be specified by introducing the particular denitrification parameters to which it is being applied. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]