RESEARCH ARTICLE Eukaryotes in Arctic and Antarctic cyanobacterial mats Anne D. Jungblut1, Warwick F. Vincent2 & Connie Lovejoy3 1De´ partement de Biologie, Centre d’E´ tudes Nordiques (CEN), Institut de biologie inte´ grative et des syste` mes (IBIS), Laval University, Quebec City, QC, Canada; 2De´ partement de Biologie, Centre d’E´ tudes Nordiques (CEN), Laval University, Quebec City, QC, Canada; and 3De´ partement de Biologie, Que´ bec-Oce´ an, Institut de biologie inte´ grative et des syste` mes (IBIS), Laval University, Quebec City, QC, Canada Correspondence: Anne D. Jungblut, Abstract Department of Botany, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, Cyanobacterial mats are commonly found in freshwater ecosystems throughout UK. Tel.: +44 +20 7242 5285; fax: +44 +20 the polar regions. Most mats are multilayered three-dimensional structures 7242 5505; e-mail:
[email protected] with the filamentous cyanobacteria embedded in a gel-like matrix. Although early descriptions mentioned the presence of larger organisms including meta- Received 13 March 2012; revised 21 May zoans living in the mats, there have been few studies specifically focused on the 2012; accepted 21 May 2012. microbial eukaryotes, which are often small cells with few morphological fea- Final version published online 27 June 2012. tures suitable for identification by microscopy. Here, we applied 18S rRNA DOI: 10.1111/j.1574-6941.2012.01418.x gene clone library analysis to identify eukaryotes in cyanobacterial mat com- munities from both the Antarctic and the extreme High Arctic. We identified Editor: Max Ha¨ ggblom 39 ribotypes at the level of 99% sequence similarity. These consisted of taxa within algal and other protist groups including Chlorophyceae, Prasinophyceae, Keywords Ulvophyceae, Trebouxiophyceae, Bacillariophyceae, Chrysophyceae, Ciliophora, cyanobacterial mats; polar; biogeography; and Cercozoa.