Studying diatoms in the most remote place on Earth is not just a scientific curiosity!
❄️ Why Antarctica? Have you ever wondered how many and what kinds of organisms live on the frozen continent? Antarctica is often described as a land of ice and silence, but despite its extreme conditions—sub-zero temperatures, lack of liquid water, intense UV radiation, and long periods of darkness—more than 9,000 species of organisms have been recorded both on the continent and in the surrounding Southern Ocean (source: SCAR). These range from just two species of vascular plants to fish, marine mammals, penguins, zooplankton, and an astonishing variety of microorganisms. Life finds truly surprising ways to adapt!
What about diatoms? Well, they are among the most abundant and ecologically important photosynthetic organisms in these ecosystems (the first reason they’re worth studying here!) They also represent one of the most diverse groups of eukaryotes with much of this diversity being both endemic and geographically restricted. For example, the genus Luticola shows one of the most striking cases of endemism in Antarctica (Kociolek et al., 2017).
Antarctica isn’t just white and empty. The region where most of our research is focused—the Maritime Antarctic Region—includes the Antarctic Peninsula, the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands, and other islands like Anvers, King George, Deception, and Livingston. These areas are relatively milder and more humid than the continental interior, which favors the development of ice-free zones. These zones are expanding due to climate change, creating new habitats and raising new questions: which organisms are colonizing them, and how are they changing over time? (second reason!) To detect the ecological responses of freshwater communities to ongoing climate change, we first need to understand the factors shaping their structure, which can then be used to make informed predictions about their future trajectories (Kollar et al., 2023).
So, how is all this being studied? Through a combination of taxonomic research (Zidarova et al., 2016), biogeographic analyses (Verleyen et al., 2021), paleoecological reconstructions (Pinseel et al., 2021), and molecular tools (Kollar et al., 2025). This research spans multiple disciplines—geology, glaciology, limnology, metagenomics, ecology, evolution—making Antarctica feel like one massive continent-scale laboratory of nature (third reason!)
So… If you’ve read this far, thank you! I hope it sparked the same curiosity that drew me into this field when I started working on my thesis. This is just a brief overview of what’s to come. I invite you to discover the work of my colleagues—everything’s on our website (DiCE Lab:https://web.natur.cuni.cz/ecology/DiCE/ ). See you there! :)
References:
Kociolek, J. P., Kopalová, K., Hamsher, S. E., Kohler, T. J., Van de Vijver, B., Convey, P., & McKnight, D. M. (2017). Freshwater diatom biogeography and the genus Luticola: An extreme case of endemism in Antarctica. Polar Biology, 40(6), 1185–1196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-017-2090-7
Kollár, J., Kopalová, K., Kavan, J., Vrbická, K., Nývlt, D., Nedbalová, L., Stibal, M., & Kohler, T. J. (2023). Recently formed Antarctic lakes host less diverse benthic bacterial and diatom communities than their older counterparts. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 99(9), fiad087. https://doi.org/10.1093/femsec/fiad087
Kollar, J., Kopalova, K., & Kohler, J. T. (2025). Diatom studies three decades into the molecular age: A bibliometric analysis reveals genetic underexploration of diatoms compared to other taxa. Fottea, 25(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.5507/fot.2024.009
Pinseel, E., Vijver, B. V. de, Wolfe, A. P., Harper, M., Antoniades, D., Ashworth, A. C., Ector, L., Lewis, A. R., Perren, B., Hodgson, D. A., Sabbe, K., Verleyen, E., & Vyverman, W. (2021). Extinction of austral diatoms in response to large-scale climate dynamics in Antarctica. Science Advances, 7(38), eabh3233. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abh3233
Verleyen, E., Van de Vijver, B., Tytgat, B., Pinseel, E., Hodgson, D. A., Kopalová, K., Chown, S. L., Van Ranst, E., Imura, S., Kudoh, S., Van Nieuwenhuyze, W., consortium, A., Sabbe, K., & Vyverman, W. (2021). Diatoms define a novel freshwater biogeography of the Antarctic. Ecography, 44(4), 548–560. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.05374
Zidarova, R., Kopalová, K., de Vijver, V., Spaulding, S. A., Lange-Bertalot, H., & Potapova, M. (2016). Diatoms from the Antarctic Region: Maritime Antarctica. Koeltz Botanical Books. https://books.google.cz/books?id=Wd0qnQAACAAJ
Figure 1. Picture of one of the studied areas taken by Petr Jan Juračka.
Figure 2. Picture of one of the studied areas taken by Petr Jan Juračka.
Figure 3. Picture of a Navicula taken by Kateřina Kopalová.
Figure 4. Picture of one of the studied areas taken by Kateřina Kopalová.
Hi! My name is Raquel Viso and I live with curiosity:). That curiosity led me into the world of diatoms, which I began exploring during my bachelor’s and master’s theses in Spain. I am now a PhD student in the DiCE group (Charles University, Prague), working on and learning about diatoms from different perspectives and across various habitats in Antarctica. I combine morphological and molecular techniques to explore the diversity and structure of community assemblages in cryosphere-associated environments.