1/10: Life in all the places

1/9/2019

1/10: Life in all the places

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Our planet is packed with diversity

Please take a look at page 350 in our book

Total classified Species: Approximately 1.8 million
Estimated Species on Earth: 5 to 30 million
We have not classified most of the species on this planet
Millions of bacteria have not even been seen yet
We have barely explored the ocean
Mushroom Spores can survive the vacuum of space, so can Tardigrades

most of the time evolution happens by animals splitting off from groups of other animals

Polar bears are most related to brown bears in Siberia

Convergent Evolution: when species that are not related develop similar adaptations, an examples is fish in cold places, fish avoid freezing by having proteins called glycoproteins, they work as an antifreeze.

This happens through independent episodes of natural selection, the fish with the proteins were able to survive the freeing water and were able to reproduce, passing on their genes that code for glycoproteins.

So both Arctic and Antarctic fish have this natural antifreeze even though they are not closely related.

phylogeny and taxonomy

Phylogeny: is the evolutionary history of a group of organisms, how long ago they had a common ancestor

A Phylogenetic Tree: shows the relationships of common ancestry

Taxonomy: is how we classify the organism on a chart according to:

Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species
Before that there is Domain, there are three domains (pg. 354):
- Bacteria: no nucleous, prokaryote
- Archaea: no nucleus, prokaryote, tend to live in extreme places
- Eukarya: nucleus, animals, plants fungi
Protists are spread out, according to DNA, they don't follow rules like that: amoeba are protists, made up of a single cell

on page 352 we can see that a bird is more closely related to a crocodile than a lizard is

there was a common ancestor that split into crocodile, dinosaur and bird a long time after lizards started to show up in the fossil record. So there was a lizard that split off from the other lizards and then further split off into different types of animals.

In evolutionary biology, adaptive radiation: is how species split off to fit a different niche

how we explore life in extreme environments with technology

Extremophiles occur in all three domains of life: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes.

An extremophile is an organism that thrives in physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to most life on Earth. In contrast, organisms that live in more moderate environments may be termed mesophiles or neutrophiles.

Thermophiles
- Thermophiles are a type of extremophile that can survive at very high temperatures. For example, the thermophile known as thermus aquaticus, found in the hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, not only survives but thrives at temperatures as high as 160 degrees Fahrenheit (or 70 degrees Celsius).

Psychrophiles
- Psychrophiles have adapted to survive temperatures at the other extreme end. Water temperatures deep in the ocean can reach as low as -12 degrees Celsius without freezing, since salt content affects the freezing point of water.
- Some psychrophiles survive these conditions by producing their own antifreeze proteins which lowers the freezing point of water around them

Not an exactly extremophile, but close:

Tardigrades (or Water Bears)
- Tardigrades are known as polyextremophile because they are capable of adapting to many varied types of extreme conditions.
- Tardigrades are small, water-dwelling invertebrates that can survive being thrown in boiling water or being frozen in ice. Although aquatic in nature, they can be dried out completely and are able to survive by replacing the water that should be in their bodies with sugar. Despite being only about a millimeter in size, they have even survived being launched into space and thus exposure to a vacuum, cosmic rays, and dangerously high levels of ultraviolet radiation.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/science/what-are-extremophiles?

They are not single cell prokaryotes like most extremophiles, but they are microscopic

Some prokaryotic diversity is found in the depths of the ocean

Chapter 18, pg 360 is about Lost City, exploring deep sea hydro thermal vents where some extremophiles live.

hydrothermal vents

Hydrothermal vents are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart at spreading centers, ocean basins, and hotspots.

Support unique ecosystems and their communities of organisms in the deep ocean.

Seawater interaction with volcanic rocks at near 400°C

40,000 different types of microbes have been identified in hydrothermal vents

Clusters of tube worms, limpets, mussels, and anemones were seen to inhabit cracks in the lava bed where mineral-rich, geothermally heated water 'vents' out.

WHAT DOES AN ENGINEER NEED TO CONSIDER TO DESIGN EQUIPMENT FOR DEEP SEA EXPLORATION?

On May 31, 2009, one hybrid vehicle—the Nereus—reached the deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench. It dived 10,902 meters (6.8 miles) below the surface

wait, sea mining?

The deep seas are a treasure trove of valuable metals such as gold, silver, platinum, copper, cobalt, manganese, and zinc. And robots could be the key to accessing these treasures.

Most of the mining possibilities are centered in the Pacific Ocean, including the Central and Eastern Manus Basin near Papua New Guinea. While the waters there are deep – around 3,400 feet – a robot could navigate there.

Canadian company Nautilus Minerals is currently developing a copper and gold mining program on the seafloor in Papua New Guinea that is planned to be operational in 2019. The robots it plans to deploy include two kinds of cutting robots and a collecting robot to gather the materials.

http://www.nautilusminerals.com/IRM/content/default.aspx

They say that they care about the ecosystem: http://cares.nautilusminerals.com/IRM/content/default.aspx

robotics to explore the ocean

Robotics and deep sea exploration:

https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/robotics/4-ways-robots-lead-ocean-exploration

what does cobalt mining currently look like?

Cobalt is a brittle, hard, silver-grey transition metal with magnetic properties similar to those of iron (it is ferromagnetic).

In batteries, blue paint and medical procedures.
There is a very important radioactive isotope of cobalt that is used in medicine. It's not too radioactive and doesn't hurt the patient, but it can be used as a tracer element to find things like cancer.