Overview: Microbes live practically everywhere in the biosphere, including places where there are no other organisms. This means that the biosphere can be defined as everywhere there is microbial life: microbes and their habitats delineate the biosphere! And there are an extraordinary number of very exotic and extreme places on the planet where microbes live. But the microbes living in extreme environments, such as those characterized by high or low temperatures, salinity, acidity/alkalinity, low humidity, high concentrations of toxic materials, etc., are not generally the same as those living in non-extreme environments and have special activities to deal with the prevailing conditions. Microbiologists like to study such organisms because they often discover completely new forms of life and biological activities. And comparing them with microbes from non-extreme environments tells us a lot about how biological activities work. Moreover, some extreme environments on Earth are not so different from places on other planets, so serve as pragmatic proxies for such planets. Studying the microbes living in such environments inform us about what type of life might exist on other planets, if it does (the topic of astrobiology). So studying the microbes living in exotic environments is incredibly exciting, in terms of the potential to make completely new discoveries, of the exploration of amazing, essentially unknown places on earth, of the adventure of accessing some of them, like the deep sea, and of learning what type of biological processes might exist elsewhere in the universe. Let’s share this excitement lucky microbiologists enjoy and go exploring with them!
Creation of the TFs is a work in progress: those already available are indicated by titles that are live links. Titles of those still in the pipeline are shown for context.
(For vignettes of some of the star actors in these stories, see the MicroStars Portrait Galleries)
- Antarctic Microorganisms
- Cuatro Ciénegas
- What is it like to explore the deep sea in a submersible?
- Hydrothermal Vents
- Hypersaline submarine lakes
- Rock-eating microbes
- Life in Acid
- Alkaline environments
- Life in high radiation/radioactive environments
- Microbes in Deserts
- Rio Celeste
- Tree canopy
- Caves
- Beehives