Eukaryotic diversity in Spain's River of Fire: Microbiology

This ancient and hostile ecosystem hosts a surprising variety of microbial organisms. The Rio Tinto, known by the Phoenicians as ' Ur-yero ', or 'River of Fire', because of its deep red colour and high acidity, flows through the world's largest pyritic belt in southwestern S...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2002-05, Vol.417 (6885), p.137-137
Main Authors: Amaral Zettler, Linda A., Gómez, Felipe, Zettler, Erik, Keenan, Brendan G., Amils, Ricardo, Sogin, Mitchell L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
brief-communication
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This ancient and hostile ecosystem hosts a surprising variety of microbial organisms. The Rio Tinto, known by the Phoenicians as ' Ur-yero ', or 'River of Fire', because of its deep red colour and high acidity, flows through the world's largest pyritic belt in southwestern Spain. Surprisingly, eukaryotic microbes are the principal contributors of biomass in this hostile river, which has a pH of 2 and contains much higher concentrations of heavy metals than are typically found in fresh waters. Here we show that the Rio Tinto shows an unexpected degree of eukaryotic diversity and includes new lineages that we have identified by sequence analysis of genes encoding small-subunit ribosomal RNAs. The diversity of these eukaryotes is much greater than that of prokaryotes, whose metabolism is responsible for the extreme environment.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/417137a