Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: Antarctic climate is the hardest in the Earth. Climatic conditions limit biological diversity in Antarctic ecosystems compared to those from lower latitudes. However, Antarctic aquatic ecosystems, and especially those non-marine, which present free liquid water, represent a chance for life, which there can find oases in a frozen desert. Despite Antarctic lakes often present a dense ice cover, abiotic life restrictions are less extreme during Antarctic spring and summer, thus favouring the establishment of planktonic and benthic microbial communities, which include photoautotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria, protists (either photosynthetic, heterotrophic or mixotrophic) and, in those lakes from zones with less restrictive climate, metazooplankton, often copepods, that sometimes can exert an important role in controlling pelagic food webs. Microbial mats, which are mainly formed by cyanobacteria, are, on the other hand, the most characteristic benthic community within Antarctic lakes and wetlands.
Source: Ecosistemas
Institutions: Universitat de València, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Language: Spanish
Topic: Polar Research and Ecology
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2121725530