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 »

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 »

The other day I was chatting to a neighbour about, of all things, Casuarina sp. (’She-Oak’) and the mulch they create from all the ‘needles’ they shed. (Casuarinas seem to be a very much under-appreciated and much-maligned tree,… more »

Microbes Generally ‘Microbes’ means ‘germs’ to most people, and yet maybe one in a billion microbial species is a human pathogen. ‘Only’ 1,400 or so species have been described as a human pathogen, and this number… more »

Nitrogen drawdown is the loss of nitrogen to plants in the presence of high amounts of carbon, resulting in slower growth and in extreme cases, deficiencies. Drawdown occurs when large amounts of high-carbon materials such as sawdust or wood chip are… more »

In this little section on The Essentials For Life (As We Know It) so far, we’ve covered water, photosynthesis, and the nitrogen cycle, the last two being microbial in origin. This post brings these three essentials together in an essay that… more »

So far we’ve covered two essentials for life: water (for its flowing and carrying properties over a wide temperature range), and photosynthesis (for turning light energy into food which then flows up the food chain in an ecosystem). But no… more »