To my great surprise, I discovered that I have RG observations in all but the last one, all in my local (Niagara, Canada) zone. (Must start looking closer at the local vernal pools!)
BTW – none of my observations have been made with a microscope. Virus? Maybe you can guess this one already. But I will never forget the reality of that observation.
Only the first Kingdom (animalia). I have observed a few plants, but none of them are research grade. Same with fungi. I have no microscope, so the rest haven’t been observed by me yet.
Awesome! Thanks for that. And I’ve discovered to complete my Kingdom Come challenge, all I need to do is to collect a sample of methane gas from my digestive system and document the presence of methane by igniting the sample. Archaea Kingdom!
So close I can almost smell it! (Here, pull my finger)
Virus: I just shot my positive Covid 19 test result and it made RG.
(That’s one observation I hope NEVER to spot again.)
Bacteria: there are plenty of bacterial growths that attack plants that have a signature look. I think I found mine using a telephoto on a large infected tree.
Protozoa? Slime molds are all over the place and once you start looking, it shouldn’t take you that long. They’re also (IMHO) really cool and beautiful.
Archaea will be difficult this is the only tentative obs for my Cape Peninsula. Broaden the search to Southern Africa and Namibia and this is an interesting obs! I will not achieve 8 out of 8. There are 4 obs for the whole continent of Africa.
With only 200 ish obs world-wide would make an interesting collection project …
I’ve started trying to learn more about this ‘lost kingdom’ which in a way, is exactly what the world of science has been formally try to do in the last six decades.
Some of my initial findings? The archean microbes seem to be a treasure trove for genetic research and engineering, and many of the current most standard lab enzyme tools originated from studying this obscure but well-distributed branch of life.
Their role in health and in particular, immunology is becoming more and more a research focus in their role of interactive balancing agents in healthy biomes, including our own digestive track.
As luck would have it, my nephew from Vancouver who is home in Niagara for the holidays, will be accompanying us this weekend as we head out to visit our daughter–and his cousin. Anyhow, what it translates into is hours of isolated shared space/time with a doctorate researcher who has already been working years in the human biome field.
Whenever we manage to get together, we experience that excited level of shared scientific research interest – while simultaneously acknowledging the existence and maintenance of the other ‘not quite so granularity enthusiastic’ members of the family and just plain old family fun. (Oh, we are headed for some classic nerd jamming here!)
So you can bet I’m going to be looking for more and more info on archean biology.
My microbiology professor said that due to the many similarities between archaean and eukaryotic cells, they might actually be the cause of some of the “autoimmune” diseases, rather than our own immune-cells “going rogue”. It’s not proven or anything but merely a hypothesis she put forth in one of her lectures.
Now, my knowledge in this area of biology is basically 0, so I cannot say anything about it, but it’s very interesting, I thought.
Of only 5 species. Halobacterium salinarum – Hypersaline lakes, salterns - and foods preserved by salting. Saccharolobus solfataricus – Volcanoes and hot springs around 80 degrees Celsius Caldisphaera lagunensis – Hot springs and geysers Metallosphaera cuprina – Apparently metal-metabolizing as well as thermophilic? Thermoproteus tenax – Acidic hot springs and water holes
So it would appear that i’m not going to find these in my backyard or down at the swimming beach. This is my one missing kingdom, and clearly I would have to do some rather fancy traveling to observe it.
See, here’s the thing that I think I’ve found about these microbes. They make up the bulk of extremophiles, being able to survive at temperatures, acid and salt levels that no other living things can – and at the same time they are diffused throughout the biosphere. But unless you have a very good microscope (and a lot of time and patience), the chances of observing them individually would be very difficult.
But because of their extreme tolerances, they can often quickly colonize and stand out in places at a scale that can be captured with any camera.
In fact, almost every one of the very limited archaeal iNat observations worldwide are landscape shots. But yeah, unless you live next to a hot spring geyser or acid lake… hold on.
The other day, New Year’s Eve, in fact – I was feeling quite arthropod-deprived so I sought solace in a 100-foot concrete tunnel close to where I live. This tunnel is in cross section about 12 feet wide and high and a small creek runs through it from one park area to a small wood. It’s a lovely spot to hunt for spiders and such even in the dead of winter.
But then I remembered something: I had noticed that in certain spots along the tunnel wall and ceiling, there are seams from when the concrete sections were poured. And along these seams water drips very slowly, leaching through from above. It has created tiny little stalactites, of sorts, where I have also noticed little groups of wood-lice and often spiders seem to congregate along the colourful slime deposits there. Hmm… could it be possible?
The tunnel is underneath an access road to a six-lane highway and as such is exposed to continuous road salting each winter. That’s all that I ‘thought’ this stuff could be. But when I read about how one species from Archaea can survive in almost fully saturated saline solutions I started to wonder. Here are some of the shots I took of this, ‘goo’.
What do you think? Is this worth exploring for Archaea? Could this be Haloferax colcani, or Halogeometricum? How do I test for this?
Anyhow, it’s got me very interested and wondering if this is so – could access to visible Archea evidence be as simple as sniffing around where road salt deposits could have formed?
I think it’s definitely worth exploring! What a great idea. Is there a college near you that could assist you with this? Or maybe an agency that does soil testing in your area?
This came up in a Google search and may be of interest:
Oh yeah, there’s nothing at all nearby, and there are just three observations for this kingdom in the whole province. None have made research, I noticed.
Hm. I might start with those observers and see what they’ve already tried to do for an ID, though they’re all fairly old so I think it might just be a case of a dead end for this kingdom ID – at least around here.
