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SFS Annual Meeting

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DIVERSE MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES ASSOCIATED WITH ICE, BIOFILMS, AND SEDIMENTS IN THE HIGH TETON RANGE

Glaciers and ice caps are important freshwater reservoirs and cover ~11% of Earth’s surface. These ice-dominated ecosystems play key roles in hydrological and carbon cycling; however, rising global temperatures are altering the biogeochemical processes associated with them. Increased glacial melt releases organic carbon into downstream ecosystems as dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and particulate organic carbon (POC). Supraglacial OC is likely derived from algal communities growing on source snow and ice that enters meltwater-fed streams and may influence stream microbial biofilm and sediment diversity. In this study, we characterized the microbial, eukaryotic, and fungal diversity of glacial ice, stream biofilms, and sediments using amplicon sequencing. Samples were collected from six sites in the Teton Range, Wyoming. Study sites included a range of hydrological inputs including surface glaciers, rock glaciers, and perennial snowfields. Our results suggest that snow and proglacial streams host diverse assemblages of primary producers with different algal taxa dominating proglacial streams compared to snow taxa. Understanding the local and global contributions of these microbial communities within glacier ecosystems is critical to assess impacts of changing meltwater regimes on alpine stream trophic ecology and associated carbon cycling.

Trinity Hamilton (Primary Presenter/Author), University of Minnesota, trinityh@umn.edu;


Taylor Price (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), The University of Southern Mississippi, taylor.l.price@usm.edu;


Scott Hotaling (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Washington State University, scott.hotaling@uky.edu;


Lusha Tronstad (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), University of Wyoming, Wyoming Natural Diversity Database, tronstad@uwyo.edu;


Debra Finn (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Missouri State University, dfinn@missouristate.edu;
Associate Professor Stream Ecology

Lydia Zeglin (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Kansas State University, lzeglin@ksu.edu;