SIESTA Project: Svalbard summer 2025 expedition report
Rey Mourot, Sibylle Lebert, Eloi Martinez-Rabert, Aude Barani, Gérald Grégori, Sandra Nunige, Aurélie Dufour, Sophie Guasco, Catherine Larose, James A. Bradley, Siddarthan Venkatachalam, Mukan Ji, Mincheol Kim

TL;DR
This report details a 2025 Svalbard expedition to study how glacier microbes switch between active and dormant states, and how this affects glacier ecosystems and their response to climate change.
Contribution
The study introduces a direct investigation of microbial activity and dormancy at the single-cell level in natural glacial habitats.
Findings
Microbial dormancy is a key survival strategy in glacier ecosystems.
The expedition collected samples from two Svalbard glaciers to analyze microbial metabolic states.
Future analyses will link microbial activity and dormancy to ecological and biogeochemical processes.
Abstract
Microbial dormancy plays an important role in the persistence, dispersal, and functioning of microbial communities in moderate to extreme environments. The activity or inactivity of microbial communities also has implications for rates of biogeochemical transformations and thus elemental stocks and redox conditions. Microbial communities inhabiting glacier surface environments encounter harsh and variable environmental conditions including nutrient limitation, low temperatures, and light availability across various micro-habitats including cryoconite and the bare ice surface. The metabolic states of cells within these microhabitats and in relation to their environment is fundamental to the functioning of the ecosystem and has implications for ecosystem resilience, responses to environmental change, and biogeochemical cycling. This report describes an expedition to Brøggerhalvøya,…
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Taxonomy
TopicsPolar Research and Ecology · Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology · Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology
