Tiny soil microbes are among the world's biggest potential amplifiers of human-caused climate change, but whether microbial communities are mere¹ slaves to their environment or influential² actors in their own right is an open question. Now, research by an international team of scientists from the U.S., Sweden and Australia, led by University of Arizona scientists, shows that a single species of microbe, discovered only very recently, is an unexpected key player in climate change. The findings, published in the journal Nature, should help scientists improve their simulations of future climate by replacing assumptions about the different greenhouse gases emitted from thawing⁴ permafrost with new understanding of how different communities of microbes control the release of these gases.

 

Earlier this year, the international team discovered that a single species of microbe, previously⁵ undescribed by science, was prominent in permafrost soils in northern Sweden that have begun to thaw³ under the effect of globally rising temperatures. Researchers suspected that it played a significant role in global warming by liberating⁶ vast amounts of carbon stored in permafrost soil close to the Arctic Circle in the form of methane⁷, a powerful greenhouse gas trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere. But the actual role of this microbe -- assigned the preliminary name Methanoflorens stordalenmirensis, which roughly translates to "methane-bloomer from the Stordalen Mire⁸" -- was unknown.

 

The new research nails down the role of the new microbe, finding that the sheer abundance of Methanoflorens, as compared to other microbial species in thawing permafrost, should help to predict their collective impact on future climate change.

 

"If you think of the African savanna⁹ as an analogy, you could say that both lions and elephants produce carbon dioxide, but they eat different things," said senior author Scott Saleska, an associate professor in the UA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary¹⁰ Biology and director of the UA's new Ecosystem¹¹ Genomics Institute. "In Methanoflorens, we discovered the microbial equivalent of an elephant, an organism that plays an enormously important role in what happens to the whole ecosystem."

点击收听单词发音