Transitory microbial habitat in the hyperarid Atacama Desert
نویسندگان
چکیده
منابع مشابه
Transitory microbial habitat in the hyperarid Atacama Desert
Traces of life are nearly ubiquitous on Earth. However, a central unresolved question is whether these traces always indicate an active microbial community or whether, in extreme environments, such as hyperarid deserts, they instead reflect just dormant or dead cells. Although microbial biomass and diversity decrease with increasing aridity in the Atacama Desert, we provide multiple lines of ev...
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The Atacama Desert of northern Chile is one of the driest regions on Earth, with areas that exclude plants and where soils have extremely low microbial biomass. However, in the driest parts of the desert there are microorganisms that colonize the interior of halite nodules in fossil continental evaporites, where they are sustained by condensation of atmospheric water triggered by the salt subst...
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A large fraction of the vital groundwater in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile is likely composed of "fossil" or "ancient" reserves that receive little or no recharge in today's hyperarid climate. Here, we present evidence for latest Pleistocene perennial streamflow in canyons from the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Fluvial terraces in the Pampa del Tamarugal (PdT) b...
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There is significant debate over the rates and types of fluvial activity at the Plio-Pleistocene boundary in the hyperarid Atacama Desert of Chile. To quantify fluvial processes and help resolve this debate, we measure terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) (Be and Ne) concentration depth profiles in three settings representing a chronosequence: (1) a late Pliocene alluvial fan representative of ...
متن کاملEndolithic cyanobacteria in halite rocks from the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert.
In the driest parts of the Atacama Desert there are no visible life forms on soil or rock surfaces. The soil in this region contains only minute traces of bacteria distributed in patches, and conditions are too dry for cyanobacteria that live under translucent stones. Here we show that halite evaporite rocks from the driest part of the Atacama Desert are colonized by cyanobacteria. This coloniz...
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
سال: 2018
ISSN: 0027-8424,1091-6490
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1714341115