This is a thread for collecting links to useful scientific concepts and examples of species on Earth.
Environment
Here is some information on a relative shallow (570m) hydrothermal vent.
Information on abiotic oxygen production on exoplanets.
Microscopic Life
Journey to the microcosmos is an obvious place to start, if you want to learn more about microbes then just watch this series.
How proteins can be used to stop ice crystals from harming living things.
Here’s a playlist of video footage of microbes.
Here’s a list of the biggest single cells discovered on Earth. It seems the largest bacteria are 0.75mm, the largest cell with a single nucleus can be 10cm tall and the largest multinucleate cell can have fronds 3m long. Xenophyophorea are multinucleates that can create shells 20cm in diameter at depths up to 10km. Relevant video.
Here is some information on different proposed mechanisms for single cells to form mulitcellular species. This is the TLDR.
Bacteria propelled by slime jets.
Information on the warnowiids which have very sophisitcaed eyespots possibly used for hunting.
On the subject of the smallest animals. The animal with the least cells so far discovered is a Myxozoan and has “a mere handful of cells”. Rotifers have less than a thousand cells and also don’t add cells throughout their life.
Single cells such as Choanoflagellates and Slime Moulds can form colonies with the latter being up to several square meters and 30 grams in size. Volvox algae also live in colonies of up to 50,000 individual cells.
Information about microbes in soil, how they communicate and trade with plants forming networks up to kilometers long transmitting nutrients and information.
A lecture about unusual properties and behaviour of cells.
“Multicellular life has evolved independently at least 25 times”, Single celled “Yeast evolved from multicellular ancestors” link
Information on radiotrophic organisms. A patent for using melanin and radiation to make plants, worms, fungi and bacteria grow faster.
Vampyrella basically uses a straw pilus.
Plasmids are used by some Eukaryotes.
Small colony of algae, propelled by flagella, with a light spot for guidance towards light.
Paulinella, a Eukaryote, took a cyanobacterium as a symbiont 90-140m years ago distinctly from the original event 1bn years ago which most plants are descended from…
Tetrahymena thermophila is a microbe that has 7 sexes. It also has two nucleii and has been well studied.
Cochliopodium recombine their genes by having 6 cells fuse together, swap genetic material and then split apart again as new entities.
Bacteria which have lived in ocean sediment for 100 million years.
Chloroplasts moving around inside photosynthetic organisms.
Extremophiles which live in highly saline, highly acidic (~Ph 0) and hot (90-109c) water in the Dallol geothermal area in Africa. List of acidophiles,
Another acidophile, the eukaryote red algae “G. sulphuraria is unusual for a eukaryote in being thermoacidophilic – that is, capable of growing at both high temperature and low pH. It grows well in a pH range of 0–4 and at temperatures up to 56 °C, close to the approximately 60 °C sometimes cited as the likely maximum for eukaryotic life.”
Macroscopic Life
Flying and gliding animals have evolved separately many times, without any single ancestor. Flight has evolved at least four times, in the insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats. Gliding has evolved on many more occasions. Link
Moreover convergent evolution is extremely common, here is a long list of examples, including:
- Trichromatic color vision, separate blue, green and red vision, found only in a few mammals and came about independently in humans, Old World monkeys and the howler monkeys of the New World, and a few Australian marsupials.
- Ruminant forestomaches came about independently in: hoatzin bird and tree sloths of the Amazon, ruminant artiodactyls (deer, cattle), colobus monkeys of the Old World and some Macropodidae.
On the colour of plants on alien planets.
Cool thread of unusual animals on the community forums.
Animals which can photosynthesize. Humans use UV light in the production of vitamin D.