Culturable bacteria in Himalayan glacial ice in response to atmospheric circulation

Abstract. Only recently has specific attention been given to culturable bacteria in Tibetan glaciers, but their relation to atmospheric circulation is less understood yet. Here we present the results of culturable bacteria preserved in an ice core drilled from the East Rongbuk (ER) glacier, Himalayas. The average concentrations of culturable bacteria are 5.0, 0.8, 0.1 and 0.7 CFU mL⁻¹ for the glacier ice deposited during the premonsoon, monsoon, postmonsoon and winter seasons, respectively. The high concentration of culturable bacteria in ER glacier deposited during the premonsoon season is attributed to the transportation of continental dust stirred up by the frequent dust storms during spring. This is also confirmed by the spatial distribution of culturable bacteria in Tibetan glaciers. Continental dust originated from the Northwest China accounts for the high abundance of culturable bacteria in the northern Tibetan Plateau, while monsoon moisture exerts great influence on culturable bacteria with low abundance in the southern plateau. The numbers of representatives with different ARDRA patterns from RFLP analysis are 10, 15, 1 and 2 for the glacial ice deposited during the premonsoon, monsoon, postmonsoon and winter seasons, respectively, suggesting that culturable bacteria deposited in ER glacier during monsoon season are more diverse than that deposited during the other seasons, possibly due to their derivation from both marine air masses and local or regional continental sources, while culturable bacteria deposited during the other seasons are from only one possible origin that is transported by westerlies. Our results show the first report of seasonal variations of abundance and species diversity of culturable bacteria recovered from glacial ice in the Himalayas, and we suggest that microorganisms in Himalayan ice might provide a potential new proxy for the reconstruction of atmospheric circulation.