ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Earth Sci.

Sec. Cryospheric Sciences

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1572881

Cryo multi-scale microscopy visualization tools for studying microbial communities on glacier surfaces

Provisionally accepted
  • 1UMR7294 Institut Méditerranéen d'océanographie (MIO), Marseille, France
  • 2GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany
  • 3Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Germany
  • 4Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Capital Region of Denmark, Denmark

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

In recent decades, a growing body of research has focused on characterizing supraglacial microbial communities. These studies have unveiled that pigmented glacier ice algae, namely Ancylonema nordenskiöldii and Ancylonema alaskanum, blooming during the summer melt seasons accelerate surface melting. Most techniques that quantify microbial processes on glacial surfaces require the melting of samples prior to their analysis and, so far, the structure and three-dimensional arrangement of microorganisms that bloom on bare ice surfaces have never been characterized. To address this gap, we developed, tested and validated a first characterization workflow for imaging the microorganisms colonizing the frozen ice surfaces on the Greenland Ice Sheet. While preserving their frozen state, we employed a suite of microscopic tools with progressively increasing resolution, starting from imaging algae on ice with hand-held, portable microscopes (up to 150x magnification) all the way to high-resolution cryo-scanning electron microscopy (cryo-SEM, up to 5.000x magnification). Our images provided us with the first visualization of the distribution, structure, interactions, and relationship between microbes, minerals, and their frozen substrate. Our innovative approach significantly advances the understanding of glacial microbial life within the ice matrix, shedding light on the spatial architecture of microbial cells in their on-ice state, thereby improving how we perceive and study these unique ecosystems.

Keywords: Microscopy, Cryo-SEM, glacier ice algae, multi-scale, microbial ecology

Received: 07 Feb 2025; Accepted: 01 May 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Mourot, Roddatis, Anesio, Tranter and Benning. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Rey Mourot, UMR7294 Institut Méditerranéen d'océanographie (MIO), Marseille, France
Liane G Benning, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, 14473, Brandenburg, Germany

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