Why Antarctic Mountain Ranges Don't Have Distinct Biomes

The premise of the question contains a geographical misconception: Antarctica does have mountain ranges—the Transantarctic Mountains (3,500 km long), the Ellsworth Mountains (home to Vinson Massif, the continent's highest peak at 4,892 m), and others. However, the concept of "distinct biomes" within them doesn't apply in the traditional sense.

Why Biomes Are Absent

• Ice Coverage: ~98% of Antarctica is covered by a permanent ice sheet averaging 2.16 km thick. Mountains protrude as nunataks (isolated peaks) or rocky ridges, but they're engulfed in the same polar ice cap environment.
• Extreme Climate: Temperatures rarely exceed -20°C even in summer. Precipitation is minimal (polar desert). No liquid water, no soil development, no vascular plants.
• No Vegetation Zones: Biomes are defined by plant communities (forests, grasslands, tundra). Antarctica has only cryptogamic life—lichens, mosses, algae, cyanobacteria—in isolated ice-free pockets (dry valleys, coastal oases).

What Exists Instead: Microhabitats

In the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Transantarctic Mountains) and similar ice-free zones, you find microhabitats with distinct microbial ecosystems: hypolithic communities under rocks, endolithic microbes inside porous sandstone, and meltwater-fed streams with cyanobacterial mats. These vary by moisture, salinity, and substrate—but they're microbial, not biome-scale.

So while Antarctica has impressive mountains, they don't host biome diversity. The continent is essentially a single, vast polar desert biome (or ice sheet biome), with microscopic life in rare refugia.