In Arctic and Antarctic ecology, a hypolith is a community of photosynthetic organisms, and extremophiles, that live underneath rocks in climatically extreme deserts such as Cornwallis Island and Devon Island in the Canadian high Arctic. The community itself is the hypolithon.

May 22, 2016 · Hypolith (derived from the Greek hypo-meaning under and lithikos meaning stone) is the term used to describe a community largely comprised of microorganisms that develop on the belowground surface of translucent and opaque stones but most typically on …

Jun 15, 2012 · Quartz and other translucent rocks are common and microbial communities termed hypoliths develop as biofilms on their ventral surfaces. In extreme deserts these represent major concentrations of biomass, and are emerging as key to geobiological processes and …

Hypoliths are organisms or communities of organisms that live on the underside of rocks or at the rock–soil interface. In hot and cold deserts, the underside of rocks can provide a refugium for microorganisms, both photosynthetic (cyanobacteria and algae) and non-photosynthetic (Cameron and Blank 1965; Schlesinger et al. 2003).

Quartz and other translucent rocks are common and microbial communities termed hypoliths develop as biofilms on their ventral surfaces. In extreme deserts these represent major concentrations of biomass, and are emerging as key to geobiological processes and …

Hypoliths, cyanobacteria-dominated assemblages adhering to the ventral surfaces of translucent rocks, are widely distributed in both hot and cold hyperarid deserts (Stomeo et al. 2013; Valverde et al. 2015).

Jul 19, 2022 · Using metagenomic sequencing, we assessed the functional potential of dryland soil communities and identified the functional underpinnings of ecological niche differentiation in biocrusts versus hypoliths. We also determined the effect of the anchoring photoautotroph (moss or cyanobacteria).

Oct 20, 2016 · Here we report a combined diversity and functional interrogation for soil and hypoliths of the Miers Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. The study employed 16S rRNA fingerprinting and high throughput sequencing combined …

Hypolithic microbial communities are specialized desert communities inhabiting the underside of translucent rocks. Here, we present the first study of the viral fraction of these communities isolated from the hyperarid Namib Desert.

May 15, 2017 · Patterns in 16S rRNA gene defined diversity for 64 discreet hypolith communities (Supplementary Table S1) revealed five distinct groupings at a 40% Bray–Curtis dissimilarity threshold (Figure 1). The tropical aquatic hypolithic communities were …