In a first-of-its-kind warming experiment, researchers at Northern Arizona University found that microbes growth rate decreased over 15 years of warming. The research, published this week in Global Change Biology, showed that under warmer climate conditions, growth decreased among all types of microbes in the community, and suggested that a loss of soil carbon may be responsible… Read more
Program prepares students for STEM careers critically important to DOE mission
Graduate students Maria Bolar and Megan Foley are the first from Northern Arizona University to receive awards from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through its Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. Only 65 graduate students from across the country were recognized this year. Through world-class training and access to state-of-the-art… Read more
Team of NAU paleoclimatologists contribute to major report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, forming scientific underpinnings for negotiations to limit carbon emissions worldwide
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) has just released its latest major assessment report on global climate change, approved by the world’s… Read more
Just a few bacterial taxa found in ecosystems across the planet are responsible for more than half of carbon cycling in soils. These new findings, made by researchers at Northern Arizona University and published in Nature Communications this week, suggest that despite the diversity of microbial taxa found in wild soils… Read more
Predatory bacteria—bacteria that eat other bacteria—grow faster and consume more resources than non-predators in the same soil, according to a new study from Northern Arizona University. These active predators, which use wolfpack-like behavior, enzymes, and cytoskeletal “fangs” to hunt and feast on other bacteria, wield important power in determining where… Read more
Warming global temperatures are changing life on every continent on Earth, including Antarctica, where more microbes are moving in to territory previously covered by ice. How these microbes respond to warming offers us clues about what future Antarctica will look like and who will thrive there. Microbial ecologist and PhD candidate Alicia Purcell from the Center for… Read more