Aeolian Microbes

摘要

In their day, Darwin and Pasteur both commented on microbe-bearing dust plumes from Africa. Climate change is exacerbating this phenomenon, and Hervas et al. have investigated the potential for oligotrophic alpine lakes as sentinels for long-distance bacterial dispersal. Using 16S rRNA sequences, they compared the bacterial genera found in Mauri-tanian soil samples with those in dust plumernsamples deposited in the Spanish Pyrenees and also examined the growth of the microbes in alpine lake water. Although the findings revealed the immigration capacity of certain taxa, many of the bacteria that survive passage to the Pyrenees are not spore-forming species.