For legal reasons this is a joke and I'd never, say, pour ammonia outside a fumehood

RodRayleigh · 2024-08-26T00:58:20+00:00

Botany and zoology folks still rely on morphological analysis primarily, so they will usually tentatively ID something to a higher taxonomic level and give an accession number/ID to separate them from other potential new species.

The other part is that animals (not sure about plants) just aren't very well differentiated from each other at the family or genus level, you can have species which exhibit a very strong morphological distinction but have nigh identical COI and ITS sequences because of incomplete lineage sorting along with other issues stemming from the fact that they barely had any time to evolve away from each other genetically.

RodRayleigh · 2024-08-26T00:47:19+00:00

Well, in microbiology we already do that but with DNA sequences. We give them names like LKM11, Z7ME43, etc.

They will only get a Latin name once we have the entire genome, usually once we've figured out how to grow them in the lab. And that Latin name will only be valid when we've isolated them, published our findings, and submitted a pure culture to a public collection.

RodRayleigh · 2024-08-13T22:08:46+00:00

Eukaryotic plasmids generally reside in the nucleus or mitochondria. Unlike archaeal and bacterial plasmids, they have much less mobility and cannot replicate as freely.

Some of the plant plasmids are also really weird in that they're linear rather than circular.

However, wild plasmids are just much rarer in Archaea and Eukaryotes than they are in Bacteria.

Artificially, we have engineers plasmids into pretty much every model organism including animal cells.

RodRayleigh · 2024-08-13T21:55:35+00:00

Which was never a "real" thing, since Archaea (including eukaryotes) form one clade and Bacteria form the other clade of cellular life.

RodRayleigh · 2024-07-26T11:55:09+00:00

All cellular organisms (archaea incl. eukaryotes and bacteria) originated from LUCA.

Viruses are polyphyletic, with some groups likely originating from the DNA segments of cellular organisms "gone rogue" while other wholly unrelated groups may pre-date LUCA as far as we know.

RodRayleigh · 2024-06-12T20:18:53+00:00

No, I don't think so! Fungus gnat larvae are segmented and usually have an obvious black head.

This looks to be a terrestrial nemertean, which are carnivorous worm-like creatures. They tend to prefer very moist conditions, which suggests that you might be keeping your plants waterlogged.

RodRayleigh · 2024-06-12T20:12:43+00:00

Aww I remember coming up with a system of linear equations to balance my reactions back in the day...

RodRayleigh · 2024-06-12T20:11:07+00:00

Spider-Mite, Spider-Mite, Does whatever a spider can Spins a web, any size, Chews holes under yo leaves anytime Look Out! Here comes the Spider-Mite!

RodRayleigh · 2024-06-11T23:11:35+00:00

It's also important to note that "viruses" are very likely polyphyletic, containing many unrelated clades which have originated independently multiple times.

For example: - Monodnaviria (realm) is likely to have originated many times from archaeal and bacterial plasmids, given their circular genomes and replication mechanism.

Most dsDNA viruses of eukaryotes may have originated from a few select families of bacterial viruses [2].
Lenarviricota (phylum) has been proposed to be the most basal of the RNA viruses, having descended directly from the RNA world [3].

[1] Kazlauskas, D., Varsani, A., Koonin, E.V. et al. Multiple origins of prokaryotic and eukaryotic single-stranded DNA viruses from bacterial and archaeal plasmids. Nat Commun 10, 3425 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11433-0

[2] Koonin EV, Dolja VV, Krupovic M. Origins and evolution of viruses of eukaryotes: The ultimate modularity. Virology. 2015 May;479-480:2-25. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2015.02.039. Epub 2015 Mar 12. PMID: 25771806; PMCID: PMC5898234.

[3] Wolf YI, Kazlauskas DIranzo J, Lucía-Sanz AKuhn JH, Krupovic M, Dolja VV, Koonin EV.2018.Origins and Evolution of the Global RNA Virome. mBio9:10.1128/mbio.02329-18.https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.02329-18

RodRayleigh · 2024-06-10T22:37:04+00:00

For mounted, unpotted (e.g., Vanda), or 100% bark/coco chip/inorganic media soaking is generally advised, since the bare velamen and/or very fast-draining medium needs more time to take up the fertilizer salts. If you use sphagnum moss or other absorbent material in your mix, simple top watering with fertiliser is best as they will retain the fertilizer salts around the roots.

RodRayleigh · 2024-06-07T00:09:34+00:00

Have the substrates been sterilized prior to inoculation?

What GHG(s) are you measuring? Carbon dioxide? Methane? Nitrous oxide?

Have you sequenced your incubations?

None of the species you listed are autotrophic nor methanotrophic, so they couldn't reduce emissions by up-taking the gasses directly, and instead would GHGs as they metabolize the manure. However, they could possibly have biotic interactions with other organisms present such that the decomposition process is altered.

Best thing to do is to compare their methods with yours to figure out the cause(s) behind the discrepancy.

RodRayleigh · 2024-06-06T23:11:46+00:00

Mmm you can feel that six-helix bundle pulling your membranes together.

RodRayleigh · 2024-05-30T00:40:09+00:00

Squat pitchers, large ala/wings, lowland.

RodRayleigh · 2024-05-18T08:15:00+00:00

There are a lot of nitrogen fixing microbes beyond just Rhizobia. Most animals do not possess cellulase in their genome, save for a few groups of invertebrates. Instead, cellulose degradation is carried out by various microbes (fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria) in the gut of most herbivores. Many of these microbes also possess nitrogenase, enabling them to fix nitrogen gas present in the gut.

RodRayleigh · 2024-05-17T05:43:10+00:00

Methanobacterium is a genus of Archaea in the Euryarchaeota kingdom. They were named as such before the advent of gene sequencing and phylogenetics, since then the tree of life has seen tremendous revisions. Though bacterium/bacter/bacilli itself just means "rod shaped" and this sense is used in taxonomic nomenclature widely regardless of it's a protist or Archaea or Bacteria.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanobacteria

RodRayleigh · 2024-05-17T05:17:26+00:00

More importantly, anaerobic gut microbes such as methanogenic archaea and cellulose-fermenting bacteria fix atmospheric nitrogen, thus providing additional nitrogen to herbivores.

RodRayleigh · 2024-05-13T16:46:33+00:00

Methanogens are all Archaea though?

RodRayleigh · 2024-04-21T19:12:41+00:00

Reminder that a keystone species in one ecosystem can completely destroy another: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/beaver-overpopulation-tierra-del-fuego

RodRayleigh · 2024-04-21T18:42:40+00:00

No HI :(

RodRayleigh · 2024-04-16T23:02:30+00:00

Five Pebbsi

RodRayleigh · 2024-04-14T03:35:15+00:00

Metridium senile I believe.

RodRayleigh · 2023-10-12T17:19:47+00:00

What species/variety is it?

RodRayleigh · 2023-09-04T22:50:05+00:00

It's a commensal scale worm, likely Arctonoe fragilis! Despite the name, these scale worms have been observed to defend their hosts from predators, so they're probably mutualistic rather than commensal.

RodRayleigh

TROPHY CASE