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Geomicrobiology of Antarctic Subglacial Environments - Subglacial Lake Whillans
Citation
Christner BC, Priscu JC, Achberger A, Barbante C, Carter SP, Christianson K, Mikucki JA,Michaud AB, Mitchell A, Skidmore ML, Vick-Majors TJ, and the WISSARD Science Team. 2014. A microbial ecosystem beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Nature. 512:310-313. https://doi.org/10.15468/8m7juf
Contact: Priscu, John

Access data
Archived data
Availability: Creative Commons License This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Description
Liquid water has been known to occur beneath the Antarctic ice sheet for more than 40 years,but only recently have these subglacial aqueous environments been recognized as microbial ecosystems that may influence biogeochemical transformations on a global scale. Here we present the first geomicrobiological description of water and surficial sediments obtained from direct sampling of a subglacial Antarctic lake. more

Subglacial Lake Whillans (SLW)lies beneath approximately 800m of ice on the lower portion of the Whillans Ice Stream (WIS) in West Antarctica and is part of an extensive and evolving subglacial drainage network. The water column of SLW contained metabolically active microorganisms and was derived primarily from glacial ice melt with solute sources from lithogenic weathering and a minor seawater component. Heterotrophic and autotrophic production data together with small subunit ribosomal RNA gene sequencing and biogeochemical data indicate that SLW is a chemosynthetically driven ecosystem inhabited by a diverse assemblage of bacteria and archaea. Our results confirm that aquatic environments beneath the Antarctic ice sheet support viable microbial ecosystems, corroborating previous reports suggesting that they contain globally relevant pools of carbon and microbes that can mobilize elements from the lithosphere and influence Southern Ocean geochemical and biological systems.
Geographic coverage: Samples were collected from Subglacial Lake Whillans, at the lower portion of the Whillans Ice Stream, West Antarctica. Samples were collected through a 800m borehole created with a clean, hot water drill system.
Taxonomic coverage: Planktonic microbial cells were collected on 0.2, 0.8, 3.0, and 10.0 micron filters and community structure was determined from 16S rRNA gene identities. Microbial community structure was also determined for samples from a shallow sediment core (0-40 cm).
Sampling methods: Water samples were collected and brought to the surface in Niskin bottles. Particulate matter for DNA sequence analyses was collected on 10.0, 3.0, 0.8, and 0.2 micron filters by an in situ filtration unit. Sediment samples were collected and brought to the surface using a shallow sediment multicorer. See Christner, et al 2014 for details.
Quality control: Paired end sequence reads were assembled and quality filtered using the Mothur phylogenetic analysis pipeline (v1.33.2). The sequences were aligned with the SILVA Incremental Aligner47 (SINA v1.2.11; database release 115). The aligned reads were checked for chimaeras using the Uchime algorithm, as implemented within Mothur, and chimaeric sequences were removed from the data. Sequences with >97% SSU rRNA gene sequence similarity were clustered into an OTU and representative sequences for each OTU were chosen for classification using the SILVA database.

Scope
Themes:
Biology > Organic (& bio-) chemistry
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal, Fresh water, Terrestrial, 16s rrna gene, Metadata, Microbiology, PSW, Antarctica, Archaea, Bacteria

Geographical coverage
PSW, Antarctica [Marine Regions]

Temporal coverage
From 1 February 2013 on [In Progress]

Taxonomic coverage
Archaea [WoRMS]
Bacteria [WoRMS]

Parameter
Molecular data

Contributors
Louisiana State University (LSU), moredata creatordata creator
Montana State University, moredata creatordata creator

Related datasets
Published in:
AntOBIS: Antarctic Ocean Biodiversity Information System, more
(Partly) included in:
RAS: Register of Antarctic Species, more

Dataset status: In Progress
Data type: Metadata
Data origin: Research: field survey
Metadatarecord created: 2017-08-24
Information last updated: 2019-04-10
All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy