From Dusk till Dawn: Integrating genomic and environmental data to elucidate metabolic and energetic fluxes in Arctic microbial ecosystems

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Oliver Ebenhöh; Dr. Katja Metfies
• Subject Area: Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology ; Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 433071321

• Final Report Year: 2025

Final Report Abstract

The Arctic Ocean is an ecosystem of central importance for the Earth’s climate. It experiences the most drastic effects due to man-made climate change. To understand this important and vulnerable ecosystem, the MOSAiC expedition was launched, in which the research vessel Polarstern was frozen into the ice and drifted for one year across the polar region, sampling a multitude of physical and biological data. In this project, we analysed in particular the data on marine microbes, with the goal to understand the dynamics of the marine microbial ecosystem and its importance for global nutrient cycles. In addition to data from the MOSAiC expedition, we also included data from Arctic research stations in the Fram Strait, which is located at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean between Greenland and Svalbard. One of the key results of this project was that the yearly dynamics of the microbial communities follows very regular patterns, which appear to be determined mainly by light availability, temperature and salinity. However, during spring, when the day lengths increase rapidly in the transition from polar night to day, the appearing microbial communities seem to be independent on who survived in the winter. Rather, the data indicates that other events, such as transport by Ocean currents, determine which organisms thrive during early spring. Secondly, the data indicates that cold-adapted organisms find it easier to adapt to warmer temperatures than the other way around. With our research results, we contributed to our understanding of the Arctic ecosystem dynamics and provided a step forward to be able to predict how the ecosystem will be affected under various future climate scenarios.

Publications

• Multiomics in the central Arctic Ocean for benchmarking biodiversity change. PLOS Biology, 20(10), e3001835.
  Mock, Thomas; Boulton, William; Balmonte, John-Paul; Barry, Kevin; Bertilsson, Stefan; Bowman, Jeff; Buck, Moritz; Bratbak, Gunnar; Chamberlain, Emelia J.; Cunliffe, Michael; Creamean, Jessie; Ebenhöh, Oliver; Eggers, Sarah Lena; Fong, Allison A.; Gardner, Jessie; Gradinger, Rolf; Granskog, Mats A.; Havermans, Charlotte; Hill, Thomas ... & Metfies, Katja
  
• Atlantic water influx and sea-ice cover drive taxonomic and functional shifts in Arctic marine bacterial communities. The ISME Journal, 17(10), 1612-1625.
  Priest, Taylor; von Appen, Wilken-Jon; Oldenburg, Ellen; Popa, Ovidiu; Torres-Valdés, Sinhué; Bienhold, Christina; Metfies, Katja; Boulton, William; Mock, Thomas; Fuchs, Bernhard M.; Amann, Rudolf; Boetius, Antje & Wietz, Matthias
  
• DeepLOKI- a deep learning based approach to identify zooplankton taxa on high-resolution images from the optical plankton recorder LOKI. Frontiers in Marine Science, 10.
  Oldenburg, Ellen; Kronberg, Raphael M.; Niehoff, Barbara; Ebenhöh, Oliver & Popa, Ovidiu
  
• Beyond blooms: the winter ecosystem reset determines microeukaryotic community dynamics in the Fram Strait. Communications Earth & Environment, 5(1).
  Oldenburg, Ellen; Kronberg, Raphael M.; Metfies, Katja; Wietz, Matthias; von Appen, Wilken-Jon; Bienhold, Christina; Popa, Ovidiu & Ebenhöh, Oliver
  
• Overview of the MOSAiC expedition: Ecosystem. Elem Sci Anth, 12(1).
  Fong, Allison A.; Hoppe, Clara J. M.; Aberle, Nicole; Ashjian, Carin J.; Assmy, Philipp; Bai, Youcheng; Bakker, Dorothee C. E.; Balmonte, John P.; Barry, Kevin R.; Bertilsson, Stefan; Boulton, William; Bowman, Jeff; Bozzato, Deborah; Bratbak, Gunnar; Buck, Moritz; Campbell, Robert G.; Castellani, Giulia; Chamberlain, Emelia J.; Chen, Jianfang ... & Gradinger, Rolf R.
  
• Sea-ice melt determines seasonal phytoplankton dynamics and delimits the habitat of temperate Atlantic taxa as the Arctic Ocean atlantifies. ISME Communications, 4(1).
  Oldenburg, Ellen; Popa, Ovidiu; Wietz, Matthias; von Appen, Wilken-Jon; Torres-Valdes, Sinhue; Bienhold, Christina; Ebenhöh, Oliver & Metfies, Katja
  
• Seasonal recurrence and modular assembly of an Arctic pelagic marine microbiome. Nature Communications, 16(1).
  Priest, Taylor; Oldenburg, Ellen; Popa, Ovidiu; Dede, Bledina; Metfies, Katja; von Appen, Wilken-Jon; Torres-Valdés, Sinhué; Bienhold, Christina; Fuchs, Bernhard M.; Amann, Rudolf; Boetius, Antje & Wietz, Matthias