Pierr Cisneros Jurado - Biodiversity of photosynthetic communities in biological soil crusts from extreme ecosystems in Perú

Biological soil crust developing in the upper centimeters of soil from the fog oasis ecosystem.

Home institution and supervisors
César Arana. UNMSM, Perú.

Host institution and supervisors
Glenn Dunshea. NTNU, Norway. 2023.

Project description
Biological soil crusts (BSC), consist of microscopic (cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, and bacteria) and macroscopic (lichens, mosses, and microarthropods) organisms that cannot regulate their own water content independent of the surrounding environment. These cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, bacteria, lichens, mosses, and microarthropods occur on or within the top few centimeters of the soil surface. BSCs play various key roles in ecosystems and such they are considered ecosystem engineers. BSCs are key communities in the formation of new soils, primary succession, and the establishment of new ecosystems, especially in extreme ecosystems such as deserts and recently deglaciated areas.

To understand the future of the new ecosystems associated with deserts and new lands associated with glaciers, in this project the diversity of algae and cyanobacteria will be studied, as well as their variation along altitudinal and temporal gradients. BSC samples were collected to represent deglaciation chronosequences in Perú’s Cordillera Blanca mountains, which contain the world’s largest number of tropical glaciers. The study is based on the application of metabarcoding as a complement to traditional methods (e.g. microscopic, culture-based, ground cover measurement) used to study BSC samples from the lomas ecosystem, a mist fog oasis located in the Pacific coastal desert.