The diversity of microorganisms active within sedimentary rocks provides important controls on the geochemistry of many subsurface environments. In particular, biodegradation of organic matter in sedimentary rocks contributes to the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and other elements and strongly impacts the recovery and quality of fossil fuel resources. In this study, archaeal diversity was in...

A new estuarine filamentous heterocystous cyanobacterium was isolated from intertidal sediment of the Lagoa dos Patos estuary (Brazil). The isolate may represent a new genus related to Cylindrospermopsis. While the latter is planktonic, contains gas vesicles, and is toxic, the newly isolated strain is benthic and does not contain gas vesicles. It is not known whether the new strain is toxic. It...

Salinity is a major driver of bacterial community composition across the globe. Despite growing recognition that different bacterial species are present or active at different salinities, the mechanisms by which salinity structures community composition remain unclear. We tested the hypothesis that these patterns reflect ecological coherence in the salinity preferences of phylogenetic groups us...

Core flood and field tests have demonstrated that decreasing injection water salinity increases oil recovery from sandstone reservoirs. However, the microscopic mechanism behind the effect is still under debate. One hypothesis is that as salinity decreases, expansion of the electrical double layer decreases attraction between organic molecules and pore surfaces. We have developed a method that ...

Trade-offs may influence both physiological and evolutionary responses to co-occurring stressors, but their effects on both plastic and adaptive responses to climate change are poorly understood. To test for genetic and physiological trade-offs incurred in tolerating multiple stressors, we hybridized two populations of the intertidal copepod Tigriopus californicus that were divergent for both h...

Ambient salinities drop dramatically during monsoon season in Hong Kong coastal waters, posing a number of problems for externally fertilizing species like the polychaete Hydroides elegans. In this study, we investigated (1) whether adults would retain their gametes when external salinity dropped to levels too low to support fertilization and development, and (2) whether failure of development ...

Although salinity in many ecosystems such as salt marshes can be extremely high, an asymmetry in salinity range between experimental studies (relatively narrow) and field conditions (potentially broad) has strongly affected current understanding of plant salinity tolerance. To improve understanding, it is thus important to examine plant tolerances over a broad range of salinities and identify p...

We used regression analyses of water samples from 18 lakes, nine rivers, and one spring in Ethiopia to (a) test the hypothesis that water bodies of relatively higher salinity (K25 > 1000 hiS cm -1) have a different conductivity to salinity relationship than waters of lower salinity (K25 < 1000 taS cm-1), and (b) develop models to predict total cations and salinity from conductivity that can be ...

background and objectives: the region of the experiment is located in golestan province, iran, with agriculture subject to various farming conditions (rain-fed and irrigation) and different levels of salinity (more than 38% of golestan’s total land area is salt-affected). the purpose of this study has been to evaluate the stress indices in the selection of tolerant wheat genotypes, not only for...

Rocky intertidal organisms are facing pronounced fluctuations in environmental conditions even at small spatial and temporal scales. This heterogeneous habitat is a proper model system to investigate effects of physical parameters and their interactions on physiological performances of marine organisms. In the intertidal zone (especially in tidal pools), the temperature and salinity usually inc...