ecology Archives

Left) Microbialites of Pavilion and Kelly Lake structure by depth. Right) Map showing the locations of the four microbialite communities analyzed in this study. Fig. 5 was adapted with permission from White III et al.14. -- via PubMed

Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report

The Eukaryome Of Modern Microbialites Reveals Distinct Colonization Across Aquatic Ecosystems

by Keith CowingOctober 5, 2024October 5, 2024

Protists are less studied for their role and diversity in ecosystems. Notably, protists have played and still play an important role in microbialites. Microbialites, or lithified microbial mats, represent the […]

An underground biovault on the Moon -- Grok via Astrobiology.com

Cryobiology, Extinction events, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Life Support Systems, Panspermia, Planetary Protection & Biosafety, Sample Return, Societal Issues, Status Report, Terraforming & Geoengineering

Safeguarding Earth’s Biodiversity By Creating A Lunar Biorepository

by Keith CowingSeptember 30, 2024September 29, 2024

Earth’s biodiversity is increasingly threatened and at risk. We propose a passive lunar biorepository for long-term storage of prioritized taxa of live cryopreserved samples to safeguard Earth’s biodiversity and to […]

An enclosed ecosystem on an ice planet -- Grok via Astrobiology.com

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exploration Gear & Tech, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Life Support Systems, Space Agriculture, Status Report

Self-sustaining Living Habitats In Extraterrestrial Environments

by Keith CowingSeptember 24, 2024September 24, 2024

Standard definitions of habitability assume that life requires the presence of planetary gravity wells to stabilize liquid water and regulate surface temperature. Here the consequences of relaxing this assumption are […]

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership The Suomi NPP satellite acquired this image of a plume of Saharan dust as winds lofted it over the Atlantic Ocean on Aug. 24, 2024. Larger image

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Life In The Atlantic Ocean Thrives Due To Windblown Saharan Dust

by Keith CowingSeptember 23, 2024September 23, 2024

Iron is a micronutrient indispensable for life, enabling processes such as respiration, photosynthesis, and DNA synthesis. Iron availability is often a limiting resource in today’s oceans, which means that increasing […]

Earth's atmosphere as seen from the International Space Station -- NASA

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biophysics, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Microbiology & Virology, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Earth’s Atmosphere: A Transport Medium Or An Active Microbial Ecosystem?

by Keith CowingJune 28, 2024June 28, 2024

The atmosphere may be Earth’s largest microbial ecosystem. It is connected to all of Earth’s surface ecosystems and plays an important role in microbial dispersal on local to global scales. […]

Astrobiology (general), Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report

What Doesn’t Kill Gaia Makes Her Stronger

by Keith CowingMay 10, 2024May 10, 2024

Life on Earth has experienced numerous upheavals over its approximately 4 billion year history. In previous work we have discussed how interruptions to stability lead, on average, to increases in […]

Fossils of giant sea lizard with dagger-like teeth show how our oceans have fundamentally changed since the dinosaur era. Khinjaria acuta was around the length of an orca, (7-8 metres). CREDIT Andrey Atuchin

Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Impact events, Press Release

Post-Impact Changes In Earth’s Ocean Ecology

by Keith CowingMarch 6, 2024March 6, 2024

Paleontologists have discovered a strange new species of marine lizard with dagger-like teeth that lived near the end of the age of dinosaurs.

A Schematic for viral participations in key MMP steps via encoding seven AMGs that exclusively participate in MMP. Viruses encoded seven AMGs (fwdF, fae, frhB, cofE, cofF, mtrA, and pmoC; as colored in purple text) to impact the key steps in both methane production and oxidation. The methanogenesis pathway from CO2 to methane is indicated by orange arrows. More information for 17 additional AMGs that could potentially participate in both MMP and other types of metabolism pathways is provided in Supplementary Figs. S1, S2, and Data 5. -- Nature Communications

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Habitable Zones, Microbiology & Virology, Press Release

Microbial Viruses Act As Secret Drivers Of Planetary Climate Change

by Keith CowingMarch 3, 2024March 3, 2024

In a new study, scientists have discovered that viruses that infect microbes contribute to climate change by playing a key role in cycling methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through the […]

Number of generic extinctions per century among in different classes of vertebrates. The low number of reptiles and amphibia, which underestimate the magnitude of extinction pattern, is probably the result of the lack of information in earlier centuries, where very few species had been described. The dotted line represent the background extinction rate. PNAS

Extinction events, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Press Release

Human-driven Mass Extinction Is Eliminating Entire Branches Of The Tree Of Life

by Keith CowingDecember 11, 2023

The passenger pigeon. The Tasmanian tiger. The Baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin. These rank among the best-known recent victims of what many scientists have declared the sixth mass extinction, as […]

Illustration of the modeling combination between a Genome-Scale Model (GSM), i.e., Prochlorococcus MED4 GSM, and an Earth Systems Model (ESM), i.e., NEMO-PISCES, and comparison between growth rates estimated from ESM and GSM. a |From a metabolic network, we defined a solution space embedding all possible fluxes that go through each network reaction. These fluxes satisfy the quasi-steady states assumption and other thermodynamic constraints defined in the GSM. This set of constraints (C1) is defined as biotic constraints, and they affect inner reactions, as well as exchange reactions responsible for the uptake or secretion of nutrients, and a biomass reaction simulating the growth of the organism (color scale similar to panel d., see Appendix 1 for details). b |Earth Systems Models predict global ocean biogeochemistry across space and time. Here the ESM provides uptake fluxes of nutrients for each grid point for each modeled organism. In our framework, these uptake values are used as a set of constraints (C2) on the exchange reactions of the GSM. These are defined as the set of abiotic constraints that are applied in the model. c |C1 and C2 are combined to constrain further exchanged metabolite fluxes at each grid point of the global ocean. As a result, we can estimate the organismal growth rate and all feasible inner fluxes corresponding to a given environment as proposed by the ESM. d |Description of growth rates (h−1) at 5 m depth estimated from NEMO-PISCES picophytoplankton (top) and Prochlorococcus MED4 GSM (bottom). The dashed line shows the transect described in the following panel. e |Distribution of respective growth rates across latitudes and depths at longitude -24o. Grey areas indicate latitudes that do not allow Prochlorococcus MED4 growth because of thermal limits; the GSM does not consider them. The relationship between growth rates across space (above 500 m) and time (i.e., without gray areas) shows R2:0.80 and slope: 0.787 (see Extended Fig. 11). -- biorxiv.org

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Modeling Genome-scale Knowledge In Earth’s Global Ocean

by Keith CowingDecember 4, 2023December 3, 2023

Editor’s note: As we make plans to do orbital and surface sorties on other worlds searching for life it is certainly useful to use Earth and its diverse biota as […]