Rattus rattus, commonly known as the black rat or house rat has been recognized as “one of the most invasive species worldwide”. These pesky rats have set their sights on the delicate system of lava tube caves in Hawaii.
A study suggests that small mammals like rodents have adapted to thrive on human-influenced land. They also happen to carry a lot of human pathogens. This increases the risk of infectious disease outbreaks, such as pandemics.
Human activities such as coal mining and processing can cause high levels of selenium contamination, which can be harmful to human health. Could common soil fungi be the answer to this problem? #fungi #selenium #wastewater #contamination Study by: @mary_sabuda @biominerals @crsoil
What should farmers do to deal with disappearing water? Add fungi to the soil! This recent study sheds light on the use of mycorrhizae to mitigate drought in the farming industry, which is facing increasingly intense water shortages every year.
Researchers found that minerals from rocks deposited in karst aquifers during storms comes in two waves.
A study of burned and unburned cigarettes found that water chemistry and microbes living in Mediterranean beach sediments changed after 4 days of exposure to a cigarette filter.
Microbes on Earth have adapted to survive in some pretty extreme locations. The extreme dryness of deserts, high salinity in salt deposits, cold temperatures of glaciers, and even high pressures of the deep ocean don’t stop some life forms. Another extreme environment is created by a rock known as serpentinite. This…
Researchers found a hidden selenium cycle tied to manganese oxide minerals made by common soil fungi.
Can photosynthetic organisms help clean up contamination? New research from @DominiqueChaput, @biominerals, @RadicalMicrobe & authors studied manganese mineral formation by photosynthetic organisms living in a Mn polluted environment.
Sort of like a fossilized microbial lasagna, fossils called “stromatolites” are formed when layered communities of different types of bacteria trap sand, dirt, and debris in their structure over time. Stromatolites are found in rocks as old as 3.5 billion years, and containing the planet’s earliest life forms.