Seasonality is the main determinant of microbial diversity associated to snow/ice around Concordia Station on the Antarctic Polar Plateau

The French/talian Concordia Research Station, situated on the Antarctic Polar Plateau at an elevation of 3,233 meters above sea level, offers a unique opportunity to study the presence and variation of microbes introduced by abiotic or biotic vectors and consequently appraise the amplitude of human impact in such a pristine environment. This research builds upon a previous work, which explored microbial diversity in the surface snow surrounding the Concordia Research Station. While that study successfully characterized the bacterial assemblage, detecting fungal diversity was hampered by the low DNA content. To address this knowledge gap, in the present study, we optimized the sampling by increasing ice/snow collected to leverage the final DNA yield; this allowed us to target specific microbial groups, such as fungi, through amplicon sequencing. Our findings provide the first comprehensive overview of both fungal and bacterial diversity in the Antarctic Polar Plateau's surface snow/ice near Concordia Station and to identify seasonality as the main driver of microbial diversity; we also detected the most sensitive microorganisms to these factors, which could serve as indicators of human impact in this pristine environment and aid in planetary protection for future exploration missions.