Characterization of microbial communities in initial soils of James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula region

Two soil profiles with five depth increments from James Ross Island (one at St. Martha Cove - SMC, and another at Brandy Bay - BB) were investigated by combining pedological, geochemical and microbiological methods. The soil profiles are similar in respect to topographic position and parent material but are spatially separated by an orographic barrier and therefore represent lee- and windward locations towards the mainly south-westerly winds. For biological analysis, we extracted total genomic DNA from 0.5 g of soil of each depth increment in triplicates. We applied qPCR and HiSeq 16S rRNA amplicon analysis. Multivariate statistics revealed correlations between the microbial community structure and soil parameters such as chloride, sulfate, calcium and organic carbon contents, grain size distribution, as well as the pedogenic oxide ratio.