The Biosphere Blog

This post is a follow-up to this one on the discovery of a bacterial phylum 20 metres underground, and about the significance of this. Fair warning: this post will be full of generalisation and speculation, for the simple reason that a) not much is… more »

Today, 25th April, is the 110th anniversary of the first military action seen by Australian and New Zealand troops on this day 1915. The ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) suffered heavy casualties when they landed on the Gallipoli… more »

Introduction Michigan State University put out this press release on 7th April 2025, on the discovery by Professor James Tiedje, in both its Department of Microbiology, Genetics and Immunology, and Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, of an… more »

This is a follow-up post to Bee Hotel! which came about because of this post on leafcutter bees. But firstly sincere apologies to Sandra the maker of the magnificent hotel, for taking this long to get it established. Truth is, I found the perfect… more »

Back on my other site I wrote about making your own cactus/succulent mix, which isn’t relevant here. But in it, I very briefly mentioned the lithotrophs, which are. By way of background, I wrote there on the use of sand over poultry grit: Coarse… more »

Just a quick update on the two cuttings here. First the stronger, flourishing Silverhill: Four weeks ago I wrote that “I will swear blind I saw the teensiest unmistakable shape of a Silverhill jujube fruit", that disappeared sometime after a… more »

The latest xkcd comic is this one on stromatolites: (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. I had plans to write about lithotrophs (the microbial ‘rock-eaters’), but couldn’t believe the… more »

This little fellow never got the message to elongate! Complete with active ant pollinators. I didn’t even notice them until processing this photo! They are collecting the nectar from the nectary disc of the last remaining newly-opened flower - the… more »

Last December hubby and I had a wonderful time exploring the NSW Riverina area. If we hadn’t parked where we did in Narrandera (to visit the Tiger Moth Memorial) we would never have discovered this amazing tree, which we simply call The Narrandera… more »

Chinese jujube is notorious for not striking from cuttings - as are Japanese maples! Of course I had to try, and did, and have, becoming less and less interested and more and more uncaring about it as the years rolled by. But still kept giving it a shot… more »

This is the final post for the year, and what better subject to end the year with than this awesomely bright and cheerful masterpiece Bee Hotel, made by my friend Sandra! This belongs in a gallery, so I shall caption it as though it were: This will… more »

Preamble After many (I wish I had logged) research and writing hours, 16, 000+ words, 70+ images and six posts later (seven including this one), I could easily end this little mini-series with the same sentence with which it began: TL;DR There’s… more »

Introduction Part 3 of what turned out to be a mini-series (! this wasn’t the intent!) covered the real reason behind Earth’s temperatures past and present — the Sun. This massive object is almost 99.9% of the total mass of the Solar System,… more »

Introduction Let us revisit Dr Soon, and two more slides from that brilliant talk. As with the previous posts, the screenshots below are direct links to the timestamp they were taken at, for people to view more detail if they wish. Please take the time… more »

Introduction Part 3 on the Sun and climate is coming — slowly! — but in the meantime I just had to include a snippet from this most timely two-year-old talk by Dr Willie Soon which came my way just recently (thanks Phil!). Dr Soon’s entire talk is… more »