A Primer on Soil Microbes – An Interview with Sarah Hargreaves. Most of us who work in prairies think mostly about what we see aboveground.
I guess that’s understandable, but to ignore the complex and critical functioning of the soil and its inhabitants is to ignore much of what really drives grassland ecology. Of course if we DID want to focus belowground, what would we actually focus on? How much do you know about soil fungi or bacteria? Exactly. Me too. This is why I was excited that Sarah Hargreaves agreed to an interview about the mysterious world of soil microbes. What do you know the little creatures that live belowground in prairies? So, here are my initial questions for Sarah, followed by her answers.
So, after you read this post, leave any questions you have in the comments section, and we’ll see if Sarah can answer a few of them in a future post. What is a soil microbe? Soil microbes span all three domains of life and include bacteria, archaea, fungi. Now and then we get a look at soil fungi, but only when they pop up above ground. Hypnotic Art Shows How Patterns Emerge From Randomness in Nature - Wired Science. These could be layers of tissue, or a cell membrane surrounding a nucleus.
Jonathan McCabe/Flickr This looks like a cross section of muscle fibers. Jonathan McCabe/Flickr A psychedelic dog bone. Jonathan McCabe/Flickr The ribbed structures in this image resemble cellular mitchondria. Who knows what this looks like. Layers of brainy tissue? The left side of this image resembles red blood cells traveling through a blood vessel.
These could be clustered cells. This one looks like another biological mystery. Chloroplasts within a leaf? If you stare at this long enough, it might start to move. <div class="slide" data-slide-id="633369" ><img title="" alt="" width="650px" src=" data-image-width="910" data-image-height="510" /><p class="caption">These could be layers of tissue, or a cell membrane surrounding a nucleus. Turing called this the reaction-diffusion process, meaning that it’s driven by reactive molecules that can diffuse between cells. Video: Jonathan McCabe/Vimeo. 10 Incredible Photos Of Animals In The Womb. Sharebar The animal kingdom is fascinating and the process that these amazing creatures develop is equally astounding.
Here are 10 incredible photos of animals in the womb. 10. Dolphin This picture features a bottlenose dolphin approximately half way through its gestation at six months. 9. This perfectly proportioned Asian elephant fetus is halfway through its gestation period at 11 months. 8. Unlike most fish, sharks bear their young the same as mammals. Slow Life: A Macro Timelapse of Coral, Sponges and Other Aquatic Organisms Created from 150,000 Photographs. Created by University of Queensland PhD student Daniel Stoupin, this remarkable macro video of coral reefs, sponges and other underwater wildlife, brings a fragile and rarely-seen world into vivid focus.
Stoupin shot some 150,000 photographs which he edited down to create the final clip. He shares about the endeavor: Time lapse cinematography reveals a whole different world full of hypnotic motion and my idea was to make coral reef life more spectacular and thus closer to our awareness. I had a bigger picture in my mind for my clip.
But after many months of processing hundreds of thousands of photos and trying to capture various elements of coral and sponge behavior I realized that I have to take it one step at a time. Stoupin discusses Slow Life as well as the threats to the Great Barrier Reef that inspired him to make the video in a detailed entry over on his blog. Sand Looks Unbelievably Cool Under a Microscope. Next time you find yourself walking along a beach, stop for a second and shift your focus from the obvious beauty of the ocean to what’s underneath your feet. Sure, it probably looks like bunch of unremarkable brown sand, and to the naked eye, you’re totally right.
Except, the truth is, sand is very much remarkable, at least when you stick it under a microscope. “Every time I see sand under a microscope, it’s a surprise,” says Gary Greenberg. “It’s like treasure hunting, only the treasures are very small, and they’re not very expensive.” Greenberg has been photographing bits of sand for years. His fascination with photographing sand actually goes back to his fascination with microscopes in general.
“It blew my mind, to tell you the truth,” he says. Eventually, Greenberg left USC to develop microscopes full-time, and that’s when he really started studying what a microscope could do. Artistic Arrangements of Microscopic Algae Viewed Through a Microscope. Photograph of diatoms collected in Russia and arranged on a microscope slide in 1952 by A.L.
Brigger. Photograph of fossil diatoms collected in Pt. Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, California, and arranged on a microscope slide in 1968 by A.L. Brigger. Black and white photograph of fossil radiolaria arranged on a slide by R.F. Photograph of diatoms arranged on a microscope slide by W.M. Photograph of diatoms arranged in October 1974 on a microscope slide by R.I. Photograph of Arachnoidiscus diatoms collected in the Bolinas Lagoon in Marin County, California and arranged on a microscope slide by R.F. In a fascinating blend of art and science the California Academy of Sciences possesses a rare collection of microscopic diatom arrangements. Update: The California Academy of Sciences clarifies that these arrangements, despite being produced with scientific tools, are purely aesthetic, and were produced by hobbyists, not scientists.