Global supraglacial microbiomes

Le résumé fourni par la source

Microbial communities inhabiting supraglacial environments such as snow, bare ice, and cryoconite holes drive the biological darkening of glacier surfaces, reducing surface albedo and accelerating ice mass loss worldwide. Yet our understanding of what shapes their diversity and community structure across different habitats and geographic regions remains limited by uneven sampling and methodological inconsistency between studies. Here, we integrated 148 new amplicon sequencing samples from Greenland and Svalbard with publicly available data to assemble a harmonised, cross-comparable dataset of 845 prokaryotic and 242 eukaryotic amplicon libraries spanning snow, bare ice, and cryoconite holes across the Arctic, Antarctica, and lower-latitude glaciers. Applying uniform inclusion and processing criteria, we identify a globally shared but taxonomically restricted supraglacial core microbiome, and show that prokaryotic and eukaryotic communities differ in their biogeographic structuring: geographic location is the dominant driver of prokaryotic composition, while habitat type explains a larger share of eukaryotic community variation. Our dataset further exposes critical gaps in coverage of low- and mid-latitude glaciers underscoring the urgency of coordinated sampling efforts before these microbial communities are lost. The biogeographic patterns described here provide a framework for anticipating how accelerating glacier retreat will restructure supraglacial microbiomes and the downstream ecosystem services they support.

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