Microbial Populations of Stony Meteorites: Substrate Controls on First Colonizers.

ABSTRACT: Finding fresh, sterilized rocks provides ecologists with a clean slate to test ideas about first colonization and the evolution of soils de novo. Lava has been used previously in first colonizer studies due to the sterilizing heat required for its formation. However, fresh lava typically falls upon older volcanic successions of similar chemistry and modal mineral abundance. Given enough time, this results in the development of similar microbial communities in the newly erupted lava due to a lack of contrast between the new and old substrates. Meteorites, which are sterile when they fall to Earth, provide such contrast because their reduced and mafic chemistry commonly differs to the surfaces on which they land; thus allowing investigation of how community membership and structure re

SUBMITTER: Tait AW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5492697 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature