Oxygen oases for tiny animals
Nature Geoscience
2011년5월16일

Mats of microbes containing photosynthetic bacteria create an oasis of oxygen-rich sediments in otherwise low-oxygen lagoons that is exploited by small animals, suggests a paper published online in Nature Geoscience. These conditions may be comparable to those found 555 million years ago when mobile animals first appeared in the fossil record.
Murray Gingras and colleagues analysed microbial mats found in high-salinity, low-oxygen lagoons off the coast of Venezuela. The mats cover patches of the sea floor in the lagoons. They found that oxygen levels were much higher in the mats than in the mat-free areas, although they declined dramatically at nightfall. The lagoon was largely devoid of seafloor animals, with the exception of small burrowing shore crabs and insect larvae that lived only in the mats.
The authors suggest that early mobile animals that lived in seafloor sediments may also have exploited the oxygen-rich conditions associated with microbial mats.
doi: 10.1038/ngeo1142
리서치 하이라이트
-
2월26일
Environment: Shifting from small to medium plastic bottles could reduce PET wasteScientific Reports
-
2월24일
Environment: European forests more vulnerable to multiple threats as climate warmsNature Communications
-
2월11일
Environment: Global CFC-11 emissions in declineNature
-
2월9일
Marine science: Bleaching leaves long-lasting effects on coral physiologyNature Ecology & Evolution
-
2월4일
Environmental science: Fresh water in the ice-age Arctic OceanNature
-
2월3일
Climate science: Under-reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in US citiesNature Communications