PRIMARY RESEARCH PAPER Cyanobacterial diversity in the algal–bacterial consortia from Subarctic regions: new insights from the rock baths at White Sea Coast A. Kublanovskaya . K. Chekanov . A. Solovchenko . E. Lobakova Received: 8 June 2018 / Revised: 21 November 2018 / Accepted: 23 November 2018 Ó Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 Abstract Cyanobacteria characterized by excep- tional tolerance to environmental stresses often become pioneer settlers in habitats with harsh condi- tions. There, they can constitute the core of microbial communities. The taxonomic composition of the cyanobacterial component of algal–bacterial consortia dwelling in a habitat with particularly harsh conditions (rock baths at the coast of Kandalaksha Bay of the White Sea) has been elucidated for the first time. Two workflows of the taxonomic analysis of the cyanobac- teria were tested including the combinations of two programs and two databases (QIIME?Greengenes and Usearch?NCBI GenBank). Our results obviated the need of the using of a complex approach combin- ing morphological and metagenomic analyses for revealing the taxonomic structure of cyanobacteria in natural habitats. Our results show that the cyanobac- terial component of the consortia from the habitats with harsh and highly volatile environmental condi- tions is enriched with non-diazotrophic and dia- zotrophic non-branched filamentous cyanobacteria. Keywords Algal–bacterial consortia Á Cyanobacteria Á Metagenome Á Polyphasic approach Abbreviations 16SrRNA Gene of 16S ribosomal RNA NJ Neighbor-joining algorithm PCR Polymerase chain reaction OTU Operation taxonomic unit QIIME?GG Workflow of sequence data analysis in QIIME software and homolog search in the Greengenes database Usearch?GB Workflow of sequence data analysis in Usearch software and homolog search in the GenBank NCBI database Handling editor: Stefano Amalfitano Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-018-3844-0) con- tains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. A. Kublanovskaya Á K. Chekanov (&) Á A. Solovchenko Á E. Lobakova Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia e-mail: chekanov@mail.bio.msu.ru K. Chekanov Centre for Humanities Research and Technology, National Research Nuclear University MEPhi, Moscow, Russia A. Solovchenko Eurasian Center for Food Security, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia 123 Hydrobiologia https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-018-3844-0