ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Freshw. Sci.
Sec. Freshwater Species Evolution and Ecology
This article is part of the Research TopicBiodiversity In Flux: Ecological Responses to Hydrological Variability in Ephemeral and Intermittent FreshwaterView all articles
Climate-driven hydrological connectivity alters littoral and ice-covered ecosystems of Antarctic lake margins
Provisionally accepted
Rachael Marie Morgan-Kiss1*
Byron J Adams2
Satyendra Kumar2
Isha Kalra1
Shasten Sherwell1
John Barrett3
Rachel Seddon4
Shawn Devlin5Peter Doran6
Michael N Gooseff7
Ian Hawes8
Diane Marie McKnight7John Priscu9
Cristina Takacs-vesbach4- 1Microbiology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, United States
- 2brigham young university, salt lake city, United States
- 3Virginia Tech, blacksburg, United States
- 4The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, United States
- 5University of Montana Flathead Lake Biological Station, Polson, United States
- 6University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, United States
- 7University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
- 8The University of Waikato Coastal Marine Group, Hamilton, New Zealand
- 9desert research institute, Reno, United States
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Climate-driven glacial melt is altering polar ecosystems. Shifts in hydrological regimes have cascading effects on limno-terrestrial ecosystems. In the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Southern Victoria Land, Antarctica), year-round ice cover isolates lentic habitats, yet seasonal melt along the lake perimeter forms open-water "moats" during the short austral summer provide transient hydrological connectivity among soils, benthos, and the stratified water columns of the dry valley lakes. To investigate how connectivity influences biological communities, we tracked biodiversity, phytoplankton photosynthesis, and physicochemistry along lateral transects in two McMurdo Dry Valley lakes, Fryxell and Bonney. These lakes, shaped by distinct basin features (bathymetry, streams) and ecological legacies (nutrient status, chemistry), exhibited contrasting degrees of limno-terrestrial connectivity. Our data reveal that lake-specific hydrological linkages restructure microbial and invertebrate communities. We conclude that climate-induced hydrological changes destabilize previously stratified systems, altering ecological interactions and fundamental ecosystem processes across Antarctic limno-terrestrial ecosystems. Our findings provide critical insight into how polar freshwater ecosystems may reorganize under future climate scenarios, informing predictions of microbial community resilience in extreme environments.
Keywords: Antarctica, Ice-cover, Lakes, microbial communities, primary production
Received: 08 Aug 2025; Accepted: 15 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Morgan-Kiss, Adams, Kumar, Kalra, Sherwell, Barrett, Seddon, Devlin, Doran, Gooseff, Hawes, McKnight, Priscu and Takacs-vesbach. 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: Rachael Marie Morgan-Kiss
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