{"id":312259,"date":"2019-05-16T03:40:10","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T03:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=312259"},"modified":"2019-05-16T03:40:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T03:40:14","slug":"a-little-poop-goes-a-long-way-in-antarctica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/a-little-poop-goes-a-long-way-in-antarctica\/","title":{"rendered":"A LITTLE POOP GOES A LONG WAY IN ANTARCTICA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Until recently, human beings were unable to understand how organisms cope with Antarctica\u2019s severe drought and the coldest conditions on the planet. Now everyone is amazed when it has been found that the nitrogen-rich droppings from colonies of cute penguins and seals play key role in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, the fetid waste of penguins and elephant seals helps spread nutrients across surprisingly large areas of Antarctica. This fertilizer traveled nearly as far as a kilometer past the edges of their active outposts, floating on the chilled Antarctic winds.<\/span><\/p>\n

In areas where the poop wafted, tiny creatures such as mites, springtails (sometimes called snow fleas), and other microscopic critters were two to five times more abundant than in areas less fecally blessed, according to a paper in Current Biology.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new study published by the journal has discovered that the influential excrement supported thriving communities of mosses and lichens, which in turn sustained vast numbers of microscopic animals like springtails and mites for more than one 1,000 meters beyond the colony.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we see is that the poo produced by seals and penguins partly evaporates as ammonia,\u201d said co-author Stef Bokhorst from the Department of Ecological Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. \u201cThen, the ammonia gets picked up by the wind and is blown inland, and this makes its way into the soil and provides the nitrogen that primary producers need in order to survive in this landscape.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Braving bitter temperatures, the researchers waded through fields of animal waste – not to mention hordes of clamoring elephant seals and gentoo, chinstrap, and Adelie penguins \u2014 to examine the surrounding soils and plants using infrared gas analyzers that measured their respiration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Samples brought back and examined in labs revealed that there were millions of tiny invertebrates per square meter because of the lack of predators in their environment – unlike in European on American grasslands, where the number may typically be between 50,000 and 100,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe more animals we get, the larger the footprint there is, and we\u2019re finding higher diversity in those sites,\u201d Bokhorst told AFP, emphasising that species\u2019 richness was linked less with how cold or dry the region was and more to the nutrients added by the excrement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, the research allowed the team to map the hotspots across the Antarctic Peninsula, finding penguin colonies to be a proxy for biodiversity. The maps can be updated in the future using satellite imagery to determine the size and location of breeding colonies, freeing future scientists from having to conduct treacherous fieldwork.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Bokhorst, Antarctica presented an \u201cideal natural laboratory\u201d to study the relationship between nutrients and biodiversity because of the simplicity of the overall food web, in contrast to other parts of the world where ecosystems were far more complex. But the study also underscored how interconnected the continent\u2019s ecosystem was \u2014 and therefore its vulnerability to human activity.<\/span><\/p>\n

All countries working on the continent are subject to the Antarctic Treaty System, which obliges them to protect its wildlife, but Bokhorst said the study showed \u201cif you start poking at one end it will have an effect at the other end.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to keep a good eye that you\u2019re not overfishing the oceans so you\u2019re not harming food supplies, otherwise you\u2019re going to have an impact for biodiversity,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The peninsula\u2019s vibrant invertebrate communities face few predators, but the advent of tourism means there is an increasing chance people could bring seeds or even insects with them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The discovery may help researchers keep a close eye on these fragile and remote ecosystems without braving Antarctica\u2019s extreme landscape.Tiny mites and snow fleas might seem small to us, but they dominate terrestrial life in Antarctica.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tough life, and unlike the visiting birds and mammals, they can\u2019t exactly venture into the nutrient-rich water around the continent for a quick bite.<\/span><\/p>\n

But near their colony, elephant seals and penguins deliver marine takeout to these hardy invertebrates.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

letters@tehelka.com<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until recently, human beings were unable to understand how organisms cope with Antarctica\u2019s severe drought and the coldest conditions on the planet. Now everyone is amazed when it has been found that the nitrogen-rich droppings from colonies of cute penguins and seals play key role in it. In other words, the fetid waste of penguins […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":312271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,2205],"tags":[11349,11351,11350],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312273,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312259\/revisions\/312273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/312271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}