RT Journal Article
T1 The composition of endolithic communities in gypcrete is determined by the specific microhabitat architecture
A1 Casero Chamorro, María Cristina
A1 Meslier, Victoria
A1 DiRuggiero, Jocelyne
A1 Quesada, Antonio
A1 Ascaso, Carmen
A1 Artieda, Octavio
A1 Kowaluk, Tomasz
A1 Wierzchos, Jacek
AB Endolithic microhabitats have been described as the last refuge for life in arid and hyper-arid deserts where life has to deal with harsh environmental conditions. A number of rock substrates from the hyper-arid Atacama Desert, colonized by endolithic microbial communities such as halite, gypsum crusts, gypcrete, calcite, granite and ignimbrite, have been characterized and compared using different approaches. In this work, three different endolithic microhabitats are described, each one with a particular origin and architecture, found within a lithic substrate known as gypcrete. Gypcrete, an evaporitic rock mainly composed of gypsum (CaSO4 ⋅ 2H2O) and collected in the Cordón de Lila area of the desert (Preandean Atacama Desert), was found to harbour cryptoendolithic (within pore spaces in the rock), chasmoendolithic (within cracks and fissures) and hypoendolithic (within microcave-like pores in the bottom layer of rock) microhabitats. A combination of microscopy investigation and high-throughput sequencing approaches were used to characterize the endolithic communities and their habitats at the microscale within the same piece of gypcrete. Microscopy techniques revealed differences in the architecture of the endolithic microhabitats and the distribution of the microorganisms within those microhabitats. Cyanobacteria and Proteobacteria were dominant in the endolithic communities, of which the hypoendolithic community was the least diverse and hosted unique taxa, as a result of less access to sun radiation. These results show, for the first time, that the differences in the architecture of a microhabitat, even within the same piece of a lithic substrate, play an essential role in shaping the diversity and composition of endolithic microbial communities.
PB Copernicus Publications
SN 1726-4170
YR 2021
FD 2021-02
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/130586
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/130586
LA eng
NO Casero, M. C., Meslier, V., DiRuggiero, J., Quesada, A., Ascaso, C., Artieda, O., Kowaluk, T., and Wierzchos, J.: The composition of endolithic communities in gypcrete is determined by the specific microhabitat architecture, Biogeosciences, 18, 993–1007, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-993-2021, 2021
NO Financial support:The work of MCC was supported by grant BES 2014-069106 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCINN). This research has been supported by the MCIU/AEI (Spain) and FEDER (UE) (grant no. PGC2018-094076-B-I00), the NSF (grant no. DEB1556574), and NASA (grant no. NNX15AP18G).Publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).
NO European Commission
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
NO Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España)
NO National Science Foundation (Estados Unidos)
NO National Aeronautics and Space Administration
DS Docta Complutense
RD 25 mar 2026