Drifting along: using diatoms to track the contribution of microbial mats to particulate organic matter transport in a glacial meltwater stream in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica

Abstract

Flow pulses mobilize particulate organic matter (POM) in streams from the surrounding landscape and streambed. This POM serves as a source of energy and nutrients, as well as a means for organismal dispersal, to downstream communities. In the barren terrestrial landscape of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV) of Antarctica, benthic microbial mats occupying different in-stream habitat types are the dominant POM source in the many glacier-fed streams. Many of these streams experience daily flow peaks that mobilize POM, and diatoms recovered from underlying stream sediments suggest that mat-derived diatoms in the POM are retained there through hyporheic exchange. Yet, ‘how much’ and ‘when’ different in-stream habitat types contribute to POM diatom assemblages is unknown. To quantify the contribution of different in-stream habitat types to POM diatom assemblages, we collected time-integrated POM samples over four diel experiments, which spanned a gradient of flow conditions over three summers. Diatoms from POM samples were identified, quantified, and compared with dominant habitat types (i.e., benthic ‘orange’ mats, marginal ‘black’ mats, and bare sediments). Like bulk POM, diatom cell concentrations followed a clockwise hysteresis pattern with stream discharge over the daily flow cycles, indicating supply limitation. Diatom community analyses showed that different habitat types harbor distinct diatom communities, and mixing models revealed that a substantial proportion of POM diatoms originated from bare sediments during baseflow conditions. Meanwhile, orange and black mats contribute diatoms to POM primarily during daily flow peaks when both cell concentrations and discharge are highest, making mats the most important contributors to POM diatom assemblages at high flows. These observations may help explain the presence of mat-derived diatoms in hyporheic sediments. Our results thus indicate a varying importance of different in-stream habitats to POM generation and export on daily to seasonal timescales, with implications for biogeochemical cycling and the local diatom metacommunity.