bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.02.277574; this version posted January 26, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. Spatial distribution of Arctic bacterioplankton abundance is linked to distinct water masses and summertime phytoplankton bloom dynamics (Fram Strait, 79°N) 1 Magda G. Cardozo-Mino1,2*†, Eduard Fadeev 1,2,3†, Verena Salman-Carvalho1,2,4, Antje 2 Boetius1,2,5 3 1Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen, Germany 4 2Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany 5 3Current affiliation: Department of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, University of Vienna, 6 Vienna, Austria 7 4Current affiliation: Department of Microbiology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 8 Massachusetts, MA, United States of America 9 5MARUM, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany 10 † - equal contribution 11 * Correspondence: 12 Magda G. Cardozo-Mino 13
[email protected] 14 Keywords: Arctic Ocean, Fram Strait, bacterioplankton, CARD-FISH, water column 15 Abstract 16 The Arctic is impacted by climate warming faster than any other oceanic region on Earth. Assessing 17 the baseline of microbial communities in this rapidly changing ecosystem is vital for understanding 18 the implications of ocean warming and sea ice retreat on ecosystem functioning. Using CARD-FISH 19 and semi-automated counting, we quantified 14 ecologically relevant taxonomic groups of 20 bacterioplankton (Bacteria and Archaea) from surface (0-30 m) down to deep waters (2500 m) in 21 summerly ice-covered and ice-free regions of the Fram Strait, the main gateway for Atlantic inflow 22 into the Arctic Ocean.