PRESENCE OF AZOTOBACTER SPECIES IN POLAR REGIONS

Studies which were carried out in the Soviet Arctic at Novaya Zemlya (Kazansky, Trudy Polyarnoy Kommssii 7:79, 1932), Murmansk (Levinskaya and Mamivsheva, Arch. sci. biol. U. S. S. R. 43:145, 1936), the Wrangell and Kolyuchin Islands (Kriss, Mikrobiologiya 9:899, 1940), and in Greenland (Jensen, Medd. Gronland 142:23, 1951) have failed to demonstrate the presence of Azotobacter, although other types of bacteria which are common to soils of temperate regions have been isolated. A. chroococcum was that the average soil pH was around 7. Azotobacter have not been isolated from Antarctic soils. During 1956 and 1957, while the authors were carrying out bacteriological studies at the Arctic Research Laboratory, Point Barrow, Alaska (Boyd, Ecology 39:332, 1958), several samples of different soil types were collected in the Barrow area and also approximately 40 miles south near the Inaru River. Three corings of lake sediments and a sample of raised beach material rich in penguin remains, which were collected