Climate change and Antarctica – the need for long-term monitoring of microbial life

Microbial communities dominate terrestrial ecosystems in Antarctica and underpin key biogeochemical processes, yet their responses to environmental change remain poorly understood. Ice-free areas comprise only ~0.3% of the continent but function as critical refugia for soil biodiversity and are projected to expand under future warming, particularly in rapidly changing regions. While soil microbial biodiversity of the Antarctic Peninsula has been relatively well studied, continental regions within the Australian Antarctic Territory remain under-sampled, limiting baseline understanding and long-term change detection. Recent work has identified microbial diversity hotspots, harbouring previously poorly uncharacterised taxa, including members of the Vulcanimicrobiota (formerly Candidatus Eremiobacterota) and class Dormibacteria, which possess rare metabolisms – specifically the genetic capacity to ‘live on thin air’. Spatio-temporal analyses of polar soils after a decade of change indicate that increasing soil moisture favours photosynthetic primary producers at the expense of dry-adapted, trace gas chemosynthetic taxa. Despite their ecological importance, microbial communities are largely absent from Antarctic conservation frameworks and long-term monitoring programs, which remain biased toward charismatic megafauna. Continued, coordinated microbial monitoring is therefore essential to resolve ecosystem trajectories, assess the resilience of novel taxa, and inform conservation and policy decisions in a rapidly changing Antarctic terrestrial environment.