Abstract

The polar regions provide community ecologists with natural microcosms, that include reduced species diversity, steep environmental gradients and limited human perturbance. Soil biodiversity in the polar regions is poorly understood, and the driving forces behind community compositions can range in scale from glacial forces 20,000 years ago to the impact of a researcher's footstep. Here, we present the results of an investigation of the driving factors behind biodiversity in Arctic and Antarctic soils, with specific attention to the role of community assembly processes. We suggest a framework for investigating the effects of inter-bacterial community processes like facilitation and argue for the importance of these interactions in driving emergent properties of soil systems. I present a study of the heterogeneity of soil invertebrate diversity and its potential causalities in above-ground vegetation differences in an Arctic tundra. I show how past glacial activity has shaped the biogeography of soil bacterial communities in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Further, I investigated how such disturbed communities might recover, and which bacterial genera play key roles in soil community succession in polar deserts. Finally, I compared soil bacterial communities from both the Arctic, the Antarctic as well as a lower latitude hot desert to investigate the landscape-scale relationship between environmental stressors and the type and frequency of inter-bacterial interactions. Together, these studies paint a comprehensive picture of the methods, theory and investigative framework used to elucidate the underground network of soil bacteria in polar regions.

Degree

PhD

College and Department

Life Sciences; Biology

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/