Submarine mud volcanoes are a significant source of methane to the atmosphere. The Napoli mud volcano, situated in the brine-impacted Olimpi Area of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, emits mainly biogenic methane particularly at the centre of the mud volcano. Temperature gradients support the suggestion that Napoli is a cold mud volcano with moderate fluid flow rates. Biogeochemical and molecular ...

Hypersaline systems near salt saturation levels represent an extreme environment, in which organisms grow and survive near the limits of life. One of the abundant members of the microbial communities in hypersaline systems is the square archaeon, Haloquadratum walsbyi. Utilizing a short-read metagenome from Lake Tyrrell, a hypersaline ecosystem in Victoria, Australia, we performed a comparative...

Poised at the biosphere–lithosphere interface, the microbial consortia associated with stromatolites have a profound impact on the evolution of Earth’s environment. In this chapter, we review the current state of knowledge of microbial diversity in extant stromatolites by examining data generated using cultivationindependent molecular techniques. Specifically, we compare natural stromatolitic m...

Deep-sea hypersaline anoxic basins and other hypersaline environments contain abundant and diverse microbial life that has adapted to these extreme conditions. The bacterial Candidate Division KB1 represents one of several uncultured groups that have been consistently observed in hypersaline microbial diversity studies. Here we report the phylogeography of KB1, its phylogenetic relationships to...

Halophiles are organisms, and their viruses, adapted to thriving and reproducing in high salt concentrations, representatives of which can be found in all domains of life. To flourish in these environments, an individual must overcome many obstacles including high osmotic pressure, low water availability, high and low pH conditions, high temperatures, and high cell densities that enforce stiff ...

Saprobic Cladosporium isolates morphologically similar to C. sphaerospermum are phylogenetically analysed on the basis of DNA sequences of the ribosomal RNA gene cluster, including the internal transcribed spacer regions ITS1 and ITS2, the 5.8S rDNA (ITS) and the small subunit (SSU) rDNA as well as beta-tubulin and actin gene introns and exons. Most of the C. sphaerospermum-like species show ha...

The Frasnian carbonate-siliciclastic deposits of the Stipinai Formation exposed in two quarries at Petraši?nai and Klovainiai (northern Lithuania) show considerable vertical facies changes. lower part this succession is dominated by argillaceous dolomitic with subordinate fine siliciclastic deposits. They display haloturbation bioturbation structures, represent a hypersaline lagoonal environmen...

Bacteria employ a diverse array of strategies to survive under extreme environmental conditions but maintaining these adaptations comes at an energetic cost. If energy reserves drop too low, extremophiles may enter a dormant state to persist. We estimated bacterial dormancy and identified the environmental variables influencing our activity proxy in 10 hypersaline and freshwater lakes across th...