Biological sciences articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Q&A |

    Nature Geoscience spoke with Dr Shlomit Sharoni, an ocean biogeochemist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr Kelly Andersen, a tropical ecologist at Nanyang Technological University about the interplay between phosphorous cycling and the ecosystems they study.

    • James Super

  • Editorial |

    Ecosystems have long been shaped by phosphorus limitation. We need to better understand how natural and human-caused shifts in the phosphorus cycle disrupt the Earth system.

  • Editorial |

    Wetlands provide a wealth of societal and climatic benefits. Balanced conservation strategies are needed to ensure their protection in the twenty-first century and beyond.

  • Editorial |

    Thawing permafrost mobilizes concerning amounts of carbon into the wider environment. Piecing together carbon sources and sinks in this complex system is important to understanding its overall climate impact.

  • News & Views |

    The dynamics of polar marine ecosystems are poorly understood. A laser-based space-borne sensor captures annual cycles of phytoplankton biomass in seasonally ice-free polar waters, and provides clues on how growth drives these cycles.

    • Marcel Babin

  • News & Views |

    Climate change is causing widespread permafrost thaw in the Arctic. Measurements at 33 Arctic lakes show that old carbon from thawing permafrost is being emitted as methane, though emission rates have not changed during the past 60 years.

    • Torben R. Christensen

  • News & Views |

    Soil carbon stocks depend on inputs from decomposing vegetation and return to the atmosphere as CO2. Monitoring of carbon stocks in German alpine soils has shown large losses linked to climate change and a possible positive feedback loop.

    • Guy Kirk

  • News & Views |

    Microbes quickly consumed much of the methane released in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Time-series measurements now suggest that, after a steep rise, methane oxidation rates crashed while hydrocarbon discharge was still continuing at the wellhead.

    • Evan A. Solomon

  • Editorial |

    The march from an Archaean microbial world to the modern reign of more complex life was slow but not steady. Instead, the rise of the animals may have resulted from an intricate back-and-forth between evolving life and the Earth's environment.

  • Letter |

    Carbonyl sulphide is taken up by plants, and could potentially serve as a powerful proxy for photosynthetic carbon dioxide uptake. Field measurements in Israel suggest that carbonyl sulphide fluxes provide an independent constraint on indirect estimates of ecosystem photosynthesis.

    • David Asaf
    • , Eyal Rotenberg
    •  & Dan Yakir

  • Feature |

    People have changed the world irrevocably. Jan Zalasiewicz discusses whether formalization of the Anthropocene as an epoch in geological time will help us understand our place in Earth history.

    • Jan Zalasiewicz

  • News & Views |

    Sulphur cycling on early Earth is commonly linked to microbial activity. However, sulphur isotope values from 3.2–3.5-billion-year-old rocks indicate a central role for the breakdown of volcanic sulphur dioxide by ultraviolet radiation instead.

    • Boswell Wing

  • News & Views |

    The prediction of marine microbial responses to ocean acidification is a key challenge for marine biologists. Experimental evolution offers a powerful tool for understanding the forces that will shape tomorrow's microbial communities under global change.

    • Sinéad Collins

  • Article |

    Ocean acidification may seriously impair marine calcifying organisms. Emiliania huxleyi, the world’s single most important calcifying organism, may be able to evolve in response to ocean acidification conditions, according to laboratory selection experiments.

    • Kai T. Lohbeck
    • , Ulf Riebesell
    •  & Thorsten B. H. Reusch

  • Article |

    Rifting of the eastern part of the East African Rift System was thought to have begun several million years before its western counterpart. Reconstructions of drainage development, combined with dating of rift-related volcanic activity, suggest that rifting in the western branch may instead have begun at the same time as in the eastern branch.

    • E. M. Roberts
    • , N. J. Stevens
    •  & S. Hemming

  • Letter |

    The timing of onset of modern-style plate tectonics on Earth is debated. Analysis of rocks in the West African metamorphic province, which is more than 2 Gyr old, reveals that some minerals formed under conditions similar to those in modern-day subduction zones, suggesting that subduction occurred on the Palaeoproterozoic Earth.

    • J. Ganne
    • , V. De Andrade
    •  & J. Allibon

  • Letter |

    Two competing models have been suggested to explain the recovery of ecosystems from mass extinctions. An analysis of the recovery of marine pelagic communities from the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction supports a model of contingent recovery, rather than one based on trophic structure.

    • Pincelli M. Hull
    • , Richard D. Norris
    •  & Jonathan D. Schueth

  • News & Views |

    Proof that purported fossils of early life are truly old and biological is often controversial. Detailed analyses confirm the early evolution of microbial sulphur cycling and reveal microfossils in 3.4-billion-year-old beach sandstones.

    • Emmanuelle J. Javaux

  • Letter |

    Microbes were thought to be the dominant reef constructors following the end-Permian mass extinction. Sponge–microbe reef deposits formed in the Early Triassic from the western United States suggest that instead, metazoan-reef building continued immediately following the extinction wherever marine conditions allowed.

    • Arnaud Brayard
    • , Emmanuelle Vennin
    •  & Gilles Escarguel

  • News & Views |

    River systems have changed through time; the sinuous, stable channels common today developed relatively late in Earth's history. The rock record suggests that a specific type of fixed-channel river system arose after the expansion of arborescence.

    • Chris Paola

  • Article |

    The expansion of land plants led to the development of new river and floodplain morphologies. Field studies suggest that the expansion of tree habitats in the Carboniferous period caused the development of river systems dominated by multiple channels and stable alluvial islands.

    • Neil S. Davies
    •  & Martin R. Gibling

  • Letter |

    Blooms of the nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium Trichodesmium, which fuel primary production in tropical and subtropical waters, require large quantities of iron. Laboratory incubations suggest that Trichodesmium accelerates the dissolution of iron oxides and dust, increasing the rate of iron uptake.

    • Maxim Rubin
    • , Ilana Berman-Frank
    •  & Yeala Shaked

  • Article |

    Hydrothermal vents along mid-ocean ridge systems host highly productive communities of microbes. Measurements along the Juan de Fuca ridge suggest that subsurface microbes consume hydrogen in low-temperature hydrothermal fluids, before discharge of these fluids at the sea floor.

    • Scott D. Wankel
    • , Leonid N. Germanovich
    •  & Peter R. Girguis

  • Letter |

    The evolution of marine complex animals about 635 million years ago took place in relatively low-oxygen waters. An analysis of a low-oxygen, hypersaline lagoon suggests these early animals may have obtained both oxygen and food from widespread microbial mats.

    • Murray Gingras
    • , James W. Hagadorn
    •  & Kurt O. Konhauser

  • News & Views |

    The neurotoxin methylmercury accumulates in marine biota and their predators. An analysis of seabird egg shells suggests that sea-ice cover reduces the breakdown of this highly toxic compound in sea water.

    • Joel D. Blum

  • News & Views |

    • Alicia Newton

  • Letter |

    Biogenic aerosol particles of terrestrial origin, including bacteria and pollen, trigger ice formation in the atmosphere. Laboratory experiments reveal that biogenic particles of marine origin also initiate ice formation under typical tropospheric conditions.

    • D. A. Knopf
    • , P. A. Alpert
    •  & J. Y. Aller

  • Letter |

    Archaea are prevalent in the deep sea, and comprise a major fraction of the biomass in marine sediments. 13C-labelling experiments on the sea floor suggest that benthic archaea use sedimentary organic compounds to construct their membranes.

    • Yoshinori Takano
    • , Yoshito Chikaraishi
    •  & Naohiko Ohkouchi

  • News & Views |

    Peat bogs release large quantities of methane to the atmosphere. A global survey of peat mosses reveals a ubiquitous symbiotic relationship with methane-oxidizing bacteria.

    • Yin Chen
    •  & J. Colin Murrell

  • Backstory |

    Nardy Kip, Julia F. van Winden, Huub J. M. Op den Camp and an array of colleagues braved hostile acidic peat bogs around the world in a feat of truly collaborative research.

  • News & Views |

    Evidence from biomarkers and molecular clocks points to the existence of sponges tens of millions of years before their earliest fossil remains. Fossils from South Australia may narrow that gap.

    • Marc Laflamme

  • News & Views |

    The formation and burial of calcium phosphate minerals removes large quantities of phosphorus from the ocean. Radiotracer experiments reveal that bacteria in marine sediments mediate the production of these mineral phases at remarkably fast rates.

    • Ellery D. Ingall

  • Letter |

    Organic phosphorus is removed from the ocean by its conversion to phosphorite. Laboratory incubations suggest that bacteria catalyse phosphorite formation, and that the rate of conversion is greatest under anoxic conditions.

    • Tobias Goldhammer
    • , Volker Brüchert
    •  & Matthias Zabel

  • Letter |

    The loss of carbon dioxide from soils increases initially under climate warming, but tends to decline to control levels within a few years. Simulations of the soil-carbon response to warming with a microbial-enzyme model show that a decline in both microbial biomass and the production of degrading enzymes can explain this attenuation response.

    • Steven D. Allison
    • , Matthew D. Wallenstein
    •  & Mark A. Bradford

  • Article |

    Over 90% of calcareous nannoplankton species disappeared during the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction, which occurred after an impact event. Palaeontological analyses show that the extinction was most pronounced in the Northern Hemisphere oceans, possibly as a result of an increased concentration of particulates created by the impact in the north.

    • Shijun Jiang
    • , Timothy J. Bralower
    •  & Jonathan D. Schueth

  • News & Views |

    The sequence of events during the collision between India and Eurasia has long been contested. Numerical simulations imply that the key to the puzzle could lie in the subduction of continental lithosphere.

    • R. Dietmar Müller

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Biological sciences across other nature.com journals