Barcoding microbial communities in melted Antarctic cryoconite holes
Cryoconite holes serve as oases of life within Antarctic glaciers, hosting entire food webs in an environment that is frozen the majority of the year. Accounting for spatial dynamics within isolated and extreme environments is important for translating insights from these potential model systems to other ecosystems. Building on past findings that the biological component of frozen cryoconite holes was almost entirely found in the sediments and the overlying ice was nearly devoid of life, we compared sediment to the overlaying water in ice-lidded cryoconite holes on the same glacier while the holes were melted.