Scientists surprised discovered Mayflies and shrimp to throw their bodies out of ancient gas

What is the currency for life on earth? Carbon. Every living being needs a source of carbon to grow and reproduce. In the form of organic molecules, carbon contains chemical energy that is transmitted between the body when one eats the other.

Plants perform photosynthesisUsing energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen. Animals get carbon by consuming organic substance In its diet – from plants, carnivorous meals of other animals. They use this carbon for energy and for the production of molecules they need, and some carbon dioxide releases breathing.

But there are other, more slight ways to get carbon. In ours New researchWe found something very surprising. River animals were fed bacteria that eat methanewhich in turn consumed fossil fuel as food.

Usually, the carbon used by river creatures as food new in the sense that it was recently converted from gas (carbon dioxide) into solid carbon through photosynthesizing algae or trees along the coast. But in several rivers, such as the Condamine River in Queensland, there is another source: an ancient natural gas that is tormented from the underground, which are eaten by microorganisms. Insects like Mayflies have taken this carbon-based carbon with thick.

How does the river usually get its carbon?

The way photosynthesized carbon moves from the plant to the animal and then the other animal can be described as a web. Food webs show many different feeding relationships between organisms and show how species depend on each other for maintenance in intricate balance.

In Rijeka foodstuffCarbon usually comes from one of two sources: plants that grow and photosintestinal in the river (such as algae), or when organic substances like leaves rinse the rain or blow them.

Rivers that are well connected with their flood objects often receive an abundance of carbon of leaves from trees that dissolve in water or eat direct animals. Algae in the rivers provide a high quality animal carbon source because they may contain high omega-3 fatty acid concentrations essential for growth and reproduction. The primary source of carbon for river animals varies depending on prevailing conditions and individual river.

Carbon condamine

Some microorganisms called Archaea naturally produce small amounts of methane in the sediments of rivers exhausting oxygen.

But we wanted to look at condamine to see if much more methane could be used as food.

After forming deep underground, natural gas can slowly escape through cracks in the ground. If the river layer is just above, this methane -rich gas will pass into the river.

That’s What’s going on In the River Condamine Queensland. The river rises on the superbus hill, in the interior from Brisbane, and flows into the interior until he meets the Darling River.

In some parts of the Metan River is constantly piercing through a water pillar of a natural gas tank which came from late Pleistocene.

In these parts of the river, the concentrations of dissolved methane are extremely high: up to 350 times higher than trace concentrations uphill, far from the penetration of methane.

We wanted to see if the metanotrophic bacteria consuming methane from natural gas are eating river animals and can we monitor the signature of carbon through the food network.

To discover this, we analyze carbon in river animals like zooplacton, insects, shrimp, prawns and fish and compared it to different carbon sources that could make up for their food.

The results were clear: animals in the reach of natural gas penetrating the underground had a high carbon signature showing that they eat food obtained from natural gas. In fact, for insects like Mayflies, methane-based foods made up more than half (55%) of its diet.

Over time, these foods obtained from the methane moved online with food, appearing in prawns and even fish. A significant part of their carbon contributed here too.

We found that this carbon was thrown out of the methane was moving through several levels of local food network. He made almost a fifth (19%) carbon in shrimp and 28% carbon into carnivores.

For river shrimp and prawns, the leaves washed into the river were still important carbon sources. For Mayflies, algae were still an important source of food.

But our work shows that natural gas Seep can be a major, even dominant energy source for the entire web food. This is very surprising. Shows an unexpected connection between Earth’s geology and living beings in Rijeka.

Why is that important?

So far, researchers focused on the river and land plants As the main way, the river gets its carbon. Our research has discovered a surprisingly significant way in which some rivers get their carbon – methane.

IN Deep sea explorationThis time it is better understood. Bacteria that eat methane can form the basis of whole ecosystems that have emerged around the deep sea hydrothermal openings of warm water.

But so far we have overlooked the role that the bacteria that eat methane can play in the rivers. With this knowledge, we can better monitor carbon flows in the rivers so we can evaluate the productivity of the ecosystem and see how the Internet with food works.

This article was published from Conversation Under the license of Creative Commons. Read Original article. This article was published from Conversation Under the license of Creative Commons. Read Original article.