Antarctica is teeming with microbes | Hacker News Reader

Antarctica is teeming with microbes

atlasobscura.com

62 pointslelf17 comments

I love Atlas Obscura, but this entry is kind of missing the point. Every place on earth is teeming with microbes. Five thousand feet under the floor of the Challenger deep, it's teeming with microbes. In sulfur hot springs where the water is 20 degrees above boiling, it's teeming with microbes. Lakes so salty they're literally painful to drink: microbes. Inside every single specimen of multicellular life: thousands of species of microbes that live nowhere else, each one doing something vital to help keep the host alive.

Microbes are the dominant variety of life on this planet. They take up more than half the biomass. In terms of things like the oxygen, carbon and nitrogen cycles, we're just passengers on planet Earth. The bugs are in charge [1].

[1]. Except the bugs are vastly outnumbered by the viruses (which aren't alive). For every gram of live cells there are almost ten grams of viruses.

> [1]. Except the bugs are vastly outnumbered by the viruses (which aren't alive). For every gram of live cells there are almost ten grams of viruses.

Just like microbs, viruses are everywhere. Even all over humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_virome

And within human DNA.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160322100714.h...

Turns out we are all part virus. There is an interesting book called Virolution which detailed how viruses play a role in evolution.

The largest total biomass per square meter of Earth’s area is in Antarctic krill explosions fueled by nutrient upwelling in the Southern Ocean. It’s more biomass per cross sectional area than even the land directly under a redwood tree.

Under a redwood? Aren't they coniferous? Means their needles fall, acidify the soil, and essentially sterilize it. Forest floors are notoriously sterile places.

Perhaps a jungle, bayou or prairie would be a better comparison?

Never change, HN... the biomass over the footprint of a redwood tree is equal to the mass of the tree.

But under the tree? That was the assertion...

The tree itself is part of the "biomass per cross-sectional area" of the land underneath the tree.

Although I wonder how cross-sectional area applies to oceans, as they are more of a 3d phenomenon. Is it the entire column of water?

Hm. If you say so.

I would read "under the redwood" to include anything in the soil under tree. Redwood have extensive root systems and most tree's root systems exist in symbiosis with bacteria. In addition all the dead plant matter (even coniferous -> acidic) is a massive food source for fungi and insects.

"Forest floors are notoriously sterile places" - Not sure where you'd get that idea. In my neck of the woods (pun intended) most forest floors are so covered with ferns and brush you can't go off trail without serious bushwhacking. Older growth, which tend to be more open on the floor, are nevertheless loaded with shade loving plants, fungi, insects, small mammals...

I’m talking about directly under the trunk. So the mass of the entire trunk plus the mass of all the organisms in the soil as far down as you go. The mass in a column of krill (of course over much more vertical distance... miles, not hundreds of feet) is larger.

[adjusts glasses]

We don't know about life at depth. As we keep digging, we keep finding life miles down. Deep underground bacteria could be Earth's dominant life form by weight. We just don't know.

It's possible that as Earth surface life was wiped out a few times, the "life reservoar" deep underground is what, ever so slowly, repopulated it. Or that's what I heard on some, perhaps not super reputable TV show.

Here is the link to the interactive project spoken about in this interview: https://lifeundertheice.org

Looking forward to reading this more carefully later. I find the idea of visiting Antarctica super interesting and I'm glad she talks about the prep/training that went into it as will as how science is done practically in the coldest places on Earth.

I'm also curious if there are any valid concerns of super bugs getting released from melting Antarctic ice? A bit morbid but all this unknown life being released could have interesting results.

I'm not expert on these things, but if these microbes evolved without any animals around, I wouldn't have expected them to evolve any of the characteristics that make some bacteria harmful.

For example, our immune system should be able to handle them easily, because they never had to fight an immune system before.

There could be some crazy thing that happens, but I bet the odds are low enough that we don't need to worry too much.

Coincidentally, I just learned about extremophiles last night in the book How the Earth Turned Green by Joseph Armstrong. Excellent read, if you're into the origins of life.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Earth-Turned-Green-3-8-Billion-Ye...

Related: Antarctica Sets Record High Temperature: 64.9 Degrees https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/08/climate/antarctica-record...

do u have any images?

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