"Wee Beasties" and other "Critters" in TP

[Michaelangelica]

The secret life of bacteria - small, smart and thoughtful!

We can't survive without them -- and we've long underestimated their prowess. Controversially, bacteria could even have cognitive talents that rival our own. Predatory behaviour, cooperation, memory -- Jules Verne eat your heart out -- Natasha Mitchell takes you on a strange adventure into the secret world of microbial mentality.

 

On this day tradition allots

To taking stock of our lives

My greetings to all of you, Yeasts,

Bacteria, Viruses

Aerobics and Anaerobics:

A very happy New Year

To all for whom my ectoderm

Is as Middle Earth to me

 

For creatures your size I offer

A free choice of habitat

So settle yourselves in the zone

That suits you best, in the pools

Of my pores or the tropical

Forests of arm-pit and crotch,

In the deserts of my forearms,

Or the cool woods of my scalp.

Build colonies: I will supply

Adequate warmth and moisture,

The sebum and lipids you need,

On condition you never

Do me annoy with your presence,

But behave as good guests should

Not rioting into acne, athlete's foot or a boil.

 

A New Year Greeting - WH Auden May 1969

 

Natasha Mitchell: An unsettling revelation; you're not quite who you think you are. Hello, Natasha Mitchell with you on Radio National with All in the Mind. It turns out you are possibly only 1% human and 99% microbial if you were to do a cell count. So inspired by the likes of literary adventurer Jules Verne today on the show an excursion into the bewildering world of bacteria.

. . .

James Shapiro: Everywhere, they are in the air, in the water, they are in the soil, they are in the inside of rocks, in glaciers, bacteria are all around us.

Most of the living material on planet Earth is microbial and they are carrying out so many of the important chemical processes, they are maintaining the mixture of gases in the atmosphere, they are cycling the carbon and nitrogen and sulphur wastes that are produced -- they are doing all kinds of really important jobs.

They can do very well without us but we can't exist without them.

The microbe serenade.

A lovelorn microbe met by chance

At a swagger bacteroidal dance

A proud bacillian belle, and she

Was first of the animaculae

Of organism saccharine

She was the protoplasmic queen.

The microscopical pride and pet

Of the biological smartest set,

And so this infinitesimal swain

Evolved a pleading low refrain:

 

'Oh lovely metamorphic germ,

What futile scientific term

Can well describe your many charms?

Come to these embryonic arms

Then hie away to my cellular home,

And be my little diatom!'

 

His epithelium burned with love

He swore by molecules above

She'd be his own gregarious mate,

Or else he would disintegrate.

This amorous mite of a parasite

Pursued the germ both day and night,

And 'neath her window often played

This Darwin-Huxley serenade

He'd warble to her every day

This rhizopodical roundelay:

 

'Oh most primordial of spore

I never met your like before

And though a microbe has no heart,

From you, sweet germ, I'll never part.

We'll sit beneath some fungus growth

Till dissolution claims us both!'

 

George Ade 1906.

All In The Mind - 7 November 2008 - The secret life of bacteria - small, smart and thoughtful! [Highlight from the archive]

[erich]

Hi Wee-Beasters,

 

I wonder if the nitrogen isotope measurements used in this study could be applied to determine the effects seen on the nitrogen cycle with biochar amendment ?;

 

Erich

 

 

Keeping tabs on nitrogen

 

The presence of nitrogen is essential for land to act as a carbon sink. But the element can be lost from soil by leaching and by the actions of denitrifying bacteria. To date it's been unclear how much of a role these bacteria play. Now researchers from the University of California Davis, US, have found that soil denitrification is responsible for around one-third of the nitrogen lost from unmanaged land.

 

Keeping tabs on nitrogen - environmentalresearchweb

[Essay]

It's a busy month (and I didn't take microbiology in college), so I can't write much, but....

 

Sometimes the farmer will add ammonia to his fields as a fertilizer; and...

Nitrous Oxide -- N2O, the bad GHG -- is evolved when ammonium is oxidized to nitrite.

 

Nitrification, turning (oxidizing) mineral fertilizers or ammonia into the nitrates that plants use, is a complex process.

There are lots of different nitrifying/denitrifying microbes that contribute to the equilibria between the reduced ammonium or nitrous oxide and the (respectively) more oxidized nitric oxide, nitrite, and finally nitrate.

===

 

...evidence indicates [Lehmann, et al., 2009]....

Biochar enhances the diversity of the nitrifier and denitrifier microbes within the soil profile.

 

A diversity in oxygen-rich & oxygen-poor niches (within an overall aerobic soil) allows the full range of the nitrogen cycle's chemical equilibria to flourish.

Biochar provides that diversity of environmental niches, where those microbes can manage the nitrogen cycle's equilibria, maximizing nitrogen's availability as a fertilizer.

 

Biochar enhances nitrogen cycling when it adsorbs chemical inhibitors of important enzymes in the nitrogen cycle.

Biochar enhances the retention of "by-product" metabolites from denitrifiers (mainly N2O), allowing nitrifiers to produce more nitrates (or for the reduction to the non-GHG, N2).

===

 

It's fairly rare to find any bad Effects of Biochar.

 

~ :hihi:

[Michaelangelica]

New Edge Microbials

 

New Edge Microbials (NEM) supplies beneficial live microbial cultures to the agriculture industry in Australia. NEM specialises in the marketing of Rhizobium Legume Inoculants and VA Mycorrhiza into broad-acre farming systems. Depending on the application and formulation restrictions of the active ingredient, NEM can supply live microbial cultures as liquids, dry powders, and in vacuum sealed vials.

New Edge Microbials Albury

[erich]

NOT so Wee-Beasties

 

Monster Isopods

 

Yard-Long Undersea Bug Terrorizes Robo-Sub, Internet | Popular Science

 

How different Farming would be if they were this size in the soil, maybe they would farm us as a sort of cover crop?

 

Great Video

 

Erich

[erich]

A Survey of most all the Micro-Wee-Beasties in TP

 

A Molecular Survey of the Diversity of Microbial Communities

in Different Amazonian Agricultural Model Systems

Acácio A. Navarrete †, Fabiana S. Cannavan †, Rodrigo G. Taketani and Siu M. Tsai *

 

http://www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/2/5/787/pdf

 

 

 

Biochar; Impact on Soil Microbial Ecology

Teesside University

 

http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/sccs/biochar/rothamsted2010/UKBRC2010_Maruthi.pdf

 

where did they get, 0r why did they test 50% W / W ?

 

That's more char than I've ever head of. ( Except for Dr. Ng in Malaysia growing rice in 100% char.)

Soil is about 90 Lbs / cubic foot, Char 15 lbs / cubic foot, that is alot-O-Char!

 

Erich

[maikeru]

.

[erich]

Study of the stability of biochar in organic matter-rich soils and its influence on the dynamics of native organic matter

Biochar - saman