“…In spite of the in depth investigation of the structural and functional microbial diversity in frozen environments (Price, 2007;Priscu et al, 2007;Margesin & Miteva, 2011;Gunde-Cimerman et al, 2012) such as polar ice sheets and glaciers (Miteva et al, 2004, Lanoil et al, 2009Rehakova et al, 2010;Anesio & Laybourn-Parry, 2012), permafrost (Rivkina et al, 2004), mountain glacier forefields (Lapanje et al, 2012;Zumsteg et al, 2012), frozen lakes (Felip et al, 1995), sea ice (Deming, 2002), Arctic (Varin et al, 2010;Adams et al, 2014) and Antarctic permanent lake ice (Priscu et al, 1998;Dieser et al, 2010, Murray et al, 2012, very little is known about microbial communities present in cave-hosted perennial ice accumulations. Such habitats are found in caves from mid-latitude, mid-altitude mountains, where the combination of cave morphology and local climatic conditions allow for the year-round preservation of ice and associated azonal glacial climatic conditions (Perşoiu & Onac, 2012).…”