Methane is an important selection factor in microbial community assembly along the Greenland Ice Sheet margin.

Methane concentration strongly predicts microbial community structure along the Greenland Ice Sheet margin, with higher levels (>4.9 nM) linked to deterministic assembly processes.

• Why it matters: Understanding how methane influences microbial communities is crucial because these ecosystems play a key role in Arctic carbon cycling and methane dynamics, especially under warming conditions.
• What they did: Researchers sampled microbial assemblages across a 2,000-km transect using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and analyzed the influence of methane concentrations on community composition and assembly processes.
• The result: Higher methane levels were associated with stronger homogeneous selection, indicating methane exerts a deterministic influence on microbial assembly, which enhances understanding of carbon cycling in this warming Arctic ecosystem.