Cross-range comparison of supraglacial microbial communities between Gongga and Gangrigabu mountains, Southeast Tibetan Plateau

We hypothesized that supraglacial microbial communities would exhibit distinct biogeographical patterns across mountain ranges due to geographic isolation and environmental heterogeneity, with bacterial communities being more strongly influenced by local environmental factors than fungal communities.

To test this hypothesis, supraglacial debris samples were collected from multiple glaciers in the Gongga and Gangrigabu mountain ranges, located in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. Microbial community composition was characterized using high-throughput sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene (V3–V4 region) and fungal ITS region on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Raw sequence data were processed using standard bioinformatics pipelines to obtain quality-filtered reads, amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), and taxonomic assignments. In parallel, physicochemical parameters, including pH and nutrient concentrations (e.g., nitrate nitrogen), were measured for each sample to assess environmental influences on microbial community structure.