Publications de Tom Ian Battin

Glacier-fed stream diatoms (Bacillariophyta) from the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda, with the description of one new species from the genus Neidium

Leïla Ezzat, Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Massimo Bourquin, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud

Informa UK Limited2025

Predicting climate-change impacts on the global glacier-fed stream microbiome

Vincent Henri De Staercke, Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Matteo Tolosano, Tyler Joe Kohler, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Massimo Bourquin, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Andrew Lean Robison

The shrinkage of glaciers and the vanishing of glacier-fed streams (GFSs) are emblematic of climate change. However, forecasts of how GFS microbiome structure and function will change under projected climate change scenarios are lacking. Combining 2,333 pr ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2025

Episodic flooding causes sudden deoxygenation shocks in human-dominated rivers

Tom Ian Battin

Dissolved oxygen (DO) sustains river ecosystems, but the effects of hydrological extremes remain poorly understood. While high river discharge (Q) enhances aeration, floods also deliver oxygen-consuming pollutants, making net impacts uncertain. Here, we an ...

2025

Experimental evidence on the impact of climate-induced hydrological and thermal variations on glacier-fed stream biofilms

Nicola Deluigi, Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, David Touchette, Martina Gonzalez Mateu

Climate change is predicted to alter the hydrological and thermal regimes of high-mountain streams, particularly glacier-fed streams. However, relatively little is known about how these environmental changes impact the microbial communities in glacier-fed ...

2025

Glaciers are not just blocks of ice - plans to save them mustn't overlook their hidden life

Tom Ian Battin

NATURE PORTFOLIO2025

Glacier influence shapes the genomic architecture of the downstream aquatic microbiome

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Massimo Bourquin, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud

The factors and processes that shape microbial genomes and determine the success of microbes in different environments have long attracted scientific interest. Here, leveraging 2855 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) sampled by the Vanishing Glacier Proje ...

Oxford University Press (OUP)2025

Diversity and biogeography of the bacterial microbiome in glacier-fed streams

Nicola Deluigi, Leïla Ezzat, Vincent Henri De Staercke, Tom Ian Battin, Paraskevi Pramateftaki, Hannes Markus Peter, Matteo Tolosano, Michail Styllas, Tyler Joe Kohler, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Massimo Bourquin, Martina Andrea Schön, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Florian Baier

The rapid melting of mountain glaciers and the vanishing of their streams is emblematic of climate change1,2. Glacier-fed streams (GFSs) are cold, oligotrophic and unstable ecosystems in which life is dominated by microbial biofilms2,3. However, current kn ...

2025

Water Transit Time Explains the Concentration, Quality and Reactivity of Dissolved Organic Carbon in an Alpine Stream

Tom Ian Battin

The amount and quality of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) exported from terrestrial to riverine ecosystems are critical factors influencing aquatic metabolism and ecosystem health in streams, rivers, and lakes. This study investigates the interplay between ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2025

Widespread Black Carbon Deposition of Varied Origin Exported From Glaciers

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter

Atmospheric deposition delivers carbon to glacier surfaces, including from fossil fuel and biomass combustion. Nonetheless, spatial variation in the sources of organic and black carbon deposited on glaciers is poorly understood, along with their role in dr ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2025

Global emergent responses of stream microbial metabolism to glacier shrinkage

Nicola Deluigi, Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Michail Styllas, Tyler Joe Kohler, Massimo Bourquin

Most cryospheric ecosystems are energy limited. How their energetics will respond to climate change remains largely unknown. This is particularly true for glacier-fed streams, which interface with the cryosphere and initiate some of Earth's largest river s ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Gradients of Deposition and In Situ Production Drive Global Glacier Organic Matter Composition

Vincent Henri De Staercke, Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Matteo Tolosano, Michail Styllas, Martina Andrea Schön

Runoff from rapidly melting mountain glaciers is a dominant source of riverine organic carbon in many high-latitude and high-elevation regions. Glacier dissolved organic carbon is highly bioavailable, and its composition likely reflects internal (e.g., aut ...

2024

Deciphering the biosynthetic landscape of biofilms in glacier-fed streams

Leïla Ezzat, Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Tyler Joe Kohler, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud

Glacier-fed streams are permanently cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and physically unstable environments, yet microbial life thrives in benthic biofilm communities. Within biofilms, microorganisms rely on secondary metabolites for communication and competition. ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2024

Future directions for river carbon biogeochemistry observations

Tom Ian Battin

Rivers carry large quantities of carbon and form an important link between terrestrial, marine and atmospheric biogeochemical cycles, yet our observations of river carbon are severely limited. Here we provide a blueprint to build a global River Observation ...

SPRINGERNATURE2024

Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron metabolic activity decreases with polysaccharide molecular weight

Tom Ian Battin, Alexandre Louis André Persat, Jeremy Pak Hei Wong

The human colon hosts hundreds of commensal bacterial species, many of which ferment complex dietary carbohydrates. To transform these fibers into metabolically accessible compounds, microbes often express a series of dedicated enzymes homologous to the st ...

Amer Soc Microbiology2024

Ecosystem engineering by periphyton in Alpine proglacial streams

Matteo Roncoroni, Tom Ian Battin, Marc Aguet, Adrijan Selitaj, Davide Mancini

Stream periphytons are candidate ecosystem engineers in proglacial margins. Here, we quantify the extent to which they are engineers for the case of hillslope-fed tributaries in the terrace zones of proglacial margin alluvial plains. Candidate ecosystem en ...

WILEY2023

Decrypting the stream periphyton physical habitat of recently deglaciated floodplains

Tom Ian Battin

The rapid recession of glaciers is exposing large zones to the development of embryonic phototrophic ecosystems and eventual ecological succession. Traditionally, succession patterns in glacial forefields have been seen as a response to time since deglacia ...

ELSEVIER2023

Unexpected functional diversity of stream biofilms within and across proglacial floodplains despite close spatial proximity

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Jade Brandani, Tyler Joe Kohler, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud

High-mountain streams are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they intimately interface with the cryosphere. As glaciers shrink and snowpack diminishes, proglacial streams will eventually shift from being glacier-fed to streams fed by groundw ...

American Society of Limnology and Oceanography2023

River ecosystem metabolism and carbon biogeochemistry in a changing world

Enrico Bertuzzo, Tom Ian Battin, Luis Gómez Gener

River networks represent the largest biogeochemical nexus between the continents, ocean and atmosphere. Our current understanding of the role of rivers in the global carbon cycle remains limited, which makes it difficult to predict how global change may al ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

Cross-domain interactions confer stability to benthic biofilms in proglacial streams

Leïla Ezzat, Tom Ian Battin, Paraskevi Pramateftaki, Hannes Markus Peter, Jade Brandani, Tyler Joe Kohler, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Massimo Bourquin, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud

Cross-domain interactions are an integral part of the success of biofilms in natural environments but remain poorly understood. Here, we describe cross-domain interactions in stream biofilms draining proglacial floodplains in the Swiss Alps. These streams, ...

2023

Fluid flow structures gut microbiota biofilm communities by distributing public goods

Tom Ian Battin, Alexandre Louis André Persat, Jeremy Pak Hei Wong

Bacterial gut commensals experience a biologically and physically complex mucosal environment. While many chemical factors mediate the composition and structure of these microbial communities, less is known about the role of mechanics. Here, we demonstrate ...

National Academy of Sciences2023