Surface snow samples of different altitudes and snow pit samples were collected from Glacier No.1 at the Urumqi River Head,Tianshan. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) was used to examine the diversity and temporal-spatial characteris-tics of eukaryotic microorganisms with different altitudes and depths. Results show that the eukaryotic microorganisms belong to four kingdoms—Viridiplantae,Fungi,Amoebozoa,and Alveolata. Among them,algae (especially Chlamydomonadales) were the dominant group. The diversity of eukaryotic microorganisms was negatively correlated with altitude and accumula-tion time,but positively correlated with δ18O values. These results indicate that temperature is the main factor for the tempo-ral-spatial change of eukaryotic microorganisms,and the diversity of eukaryotic microorganisms could be an index for climate and environmental change.
Wei ZhangGaoSen ZhangGuangXiu LiuZhongQin LiLiZhe An
