Fig 1.
a) Forni Glacier during the ablation season. The approximate width of the glacier terminus is 240 meters (details on the recent evolution of glacier are provided in [35], phot. K. Zawierucha). b) cryoconite hole on Forni Glacier (scale bar on the picture = 8 cm), c, d) tardigrades, Cryobiotus klebelsbergi in cryoconite. Ellipses and arrows indicate tardigrades in cryoconite sediments.
Fig 2.
Boxplots of number of bacteria (ZOTU), fungi and microeukaryotes (OTU) taxa in cryoconite (six replicates = 6 x 1 millilitre), fully fed Tardigrada (four replicates = 4 x 10 specimens) and starved Tardigrada (three replicates = 3 x 10 specimens).
Fig 3.
Heatmap of bacteria in different host groups (cryoconite, fully fed Tardigrada, starved Tardigrada).
Darker colours represent higher abundance. Dendrograms highlight clustering of sites and taxa.
Fig 4.
Heatmap of fungi in different host groups (cryoconite, fully fed Tardigrada, starved Tardigrada).
Darker colours represent higher abundance. Dendrograms highlight clustering of sites and taxa.
Fig 5.
Heatmap of microeukaryotes in different host groups (cryoconite, fully fed Tardigrada, starved Tardigrada).
Darker colours represent higher abundance. Dendrograms highlight clustering of sites and taxa.
Fig 6.
Distance biplots of RDAs for a) bacteria, b) fungi, c) other microeukaryotes. Violet circles = cryoconite, green squares = fully fed Tardigrada, yellow diamonds = starved Tardigrada.
Fig 7.
Boxplots of Shannon diversity indices of bacteria, fungi and other microeukaryotes in cryoconite, fully fed Tardigrada and starved Tardigrada.
Table 1.
Separate RDAs of bacteria, fungi and other microeukaryotes communities according to host group (cryoconite, fully fed tardigrades, starved tardigrades).
Table 2.
Alpha diversity of bacteria, fungi and other microeukaryotes communities according to host group.
Poisson models of the number of bacteria, fungi and microeukaryotes taxa in cryoconite, fully fed and starved tardigrades.
Table 3.
Shannon diversity indices between bacteria, fungi and other microeukaryotes, and host group (cryoconite, fully fed tardigrades, starved tardigrades).
Gaussian models of Shannon diversity indices of bacteria, fungi and microeukaryotes communities in host groups. The significance of Gaussian models was checked with a permutation approach to account for potential slight deviations from model assumptions.