Microorganisms Can Show the Consequences of Increased Temperature

It is now possible to observe the effects of climate change, which becomes more dangerous every year, in our daily lives. Increasing natural disasters such as floods and fires, and changing seasonal cycles are among the consequences of climate change. Scientists can create many predictions and scenarios about the future. But a new study predicting the future of microscopic organisms shows that it can play a major role.

The new research, as you may remember from high school biology class, is a ‘plant, fungus or animal’ that is not considered.to protists‘ he focuses. Even a teaspoon of water tens of thousands You may have heard that it is a single-celled organism. Alright more than 200,000 sum of known species, protists. Twice as heavy as all the animals on earth combined Did you know that Scientists have discovered that they can obtain important information about our future by measuring the response of these single-celled living communities to changing temperatures.

Can climate change be prevented by examining cells?

Jean Philippe Gibert, an assistant professor at Duke University, said that when bacteria on the planet respire just like we do. they emit carbon dioxide, but due to the fact that their total mass is much higher than all living things except plants, they enter the atmosphere. most carbon dioxide states that they are among the living things that emit. This is where protists that feed on bacteria come into play.

On October 19, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an experiment by Gibert, Dan Wieczynski and other researchers was conducted for protists feeding on bacteria. small ecosystems created in glass bottles. In ecosystems where there are 10 different types of protists in each bottle, it was recorded how the increase in temperature affected the behavior of protists.

More precise predictions can be made about the future:

temperature changes currently living the effect it has on living things and their reaction. Gibert stated that they aim to see the Two weeks after 5 different bottles with temperatures set between 15-35 degrees, the results were checked and which species survived and how much carbon dioxide they released.

Researchers have determined how each species responds to different temperatures. shape and size can understand by looking discovered. These changing factors also affects the rate of collective respiration understood. Stating that this research is an important step to understand how the microorganism communities will be affected by climate change and similarly how climate change will be affected by this situation, Wieczynski summarized the results of the research as follows; “With this research, the information obtained by examining the relationship between temperature and behavior at the species level. to the entire ecosystem We can implement it.”