Waking up from the Arctic winter. Carlos Pedrós-Alió del Instituto de Ciencias del Mar CSIC.

Título: Waking up from the Arctic winter

Ponente: Carlos Pedrós-Alió del Instituto de Ciencias del Mar, CSIC.

Resumen:

The ecology of polar oceans is still poorly known. This is especially true of the dark winter, when only a handful of studies have been carried out. The Canadian projects CASES (2003-2004) and IPY-CFL (2007-2008) included time series from the darkest (December) to the most lit times of the year (June) respectively in Franklin Bay (a protected bay covered by land-fast ice) and in Amundsen Gulf (a dynamic area due to the presence of a polynya). In both cruises, the icebreaker CCGS Amundsen allowed itself to be frozen in during the fall and remained in the Arctic throughout the winter and spring, thus providing two of the very few seasonal studies in the Polar zones.
 
We analyzed the microbial community composition, dynamics, trophic interactions and metabolisms, including bacteria, archaea and protists. We could see how different trophic chains became active successively after the darkest period of the year, progressively creating a more comples food web. We also found novel metabolisms active during the dark winter. Finally, we compared the bacterial species diversity of the Artic with those of Antarctic and temperate communities. In summary, the Polar night turned out to be a lot more active than we could have anticipated.

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