microbiomes

(Ward Hunt Lake, Nunavut, Canada)

Chairs

Anne Jungblut
Natural History Museum
United Kingdom
Contact

Birgit Sattler
University of Innsbruck
Austria
Contact

Jérôme Comte
I.N.R.S.
Canada
Contact

Scope

Arctic ecosystems are underpinned by communities of diverse microscopic lifeforms, collectively referred to as microbiomes.

These occur as interacting networks that control biogeochemical processes such as greenhouse gas production and nutrient cycling, and they contribute to the base of food webs and affect populations changes at higher trophic levels.

Genomic analysis has shown that microbiomes contain assemblages of viruses, archaea, bacteria and microbial eukaryotes that are functionally as well as taxonomically diverse, but still little is known about the extent of that diversity, network relationships, spatial and temporal variation, and coupling to ecosystem processes.

Microbiomes are specific to habitat types, and their study therefore also requires the characterisation of physical, chemical and biological properties of their host environment.

Nostoc from the High Arctic

Thermokarst pond microbial network (Comte et al. 2016)

Potential Activities

We aim to connect many of the microbiological research activities in the circumpolar North and consider T-MOSAiC themes such as gradients, connectivity, threshold effects (discontinuities) and emergent properties. Potential activities include:

Synthesis paper on past molecular, environmental and physiological work on Arctic microbiomes; knowledge gaps and new/old questions that have not been but should be addressed, and use of newest tools, multidisciplinary approaches and international efforts to address questions.
Circumpolar analysis of specific microbial taxa or assemblages; for example, Nostoc commune and its associated microbiome.
Development of an Arctic microbial diversity data base with environmental metadata, via existing resources.
Evaluation of cryopreservation protocols and rationale for microbial mats and other microbial assemblages
Synthesis article describing culture collections of Arctic microbiota and their analysis.
Evaluation of snow-ice microbiota and emergent property effects, for example on albedo.
Analysis of emerging groups of microbiota and their distribution relative to environmental discontinuities (such as anoxia) and gradients (such as rivers to Arctic seas); e.g. new viral groups; Candidate Phyla Radiation Bacteria; Woesearchaeota.
Synthesis of microbiome network and gradient analyses in Arctic habitats, for example relative to permafrost carbon release.