Fig. 1

a Cryptoendolithic lichen-dominated community colonizing sandstone at Linnaeus Terrace, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Southern Victoria Land, Continental Antarctica. b Map of Antarctica. The area encircled by the red lines represents Victoria Land. c Map of the study area showing the location of the sampling sites. Sampled sites are listed in Supplementary Table 4. d Phylogenetic tree built from the GTDB-Tk multiple sequence alignment (MSA) of the 269 CBS representatives. Tip points are colored according to the GTDB taxonomic classification at the class level. Phylum-level classification is indicated by the colors in the outer circle. The 18 inner circles represent distribution of each CBS in the samples. Presence inferred by the assembly is indicated in green, while presence inferred only from the alignment of the read to the CBS representative genome is indicated in orange. e Percentage of reads that could be mapped to the CBS representatives, grouped by Phylum. f Per sample percentage of the reads that could be mapped to the CBS representatives, grouped by Phylum. g Same as e, at the order taxonomic level. h Jiangellales CBS, including the Candidatus Jiangella antarctica (yellow star)