Tardigrades (water bears) have often appeared in my writing as an example of remarkable resilience under extreme conditions. Our shared history goes back to the German edition of Life on the Edge, which came out in 1997, and from there they spread into the pages of Astrobiology. I just noticed I even created a tag for them back in the 00s when they took up space travel. Since then, they even landed on the Moon.
Surprisingly, however, I haven't had a full feature dedicated to them. As there have been several new developments in the field of tardigrade evolution, ecology and resilience accumulating in the last few months, and as I often use the first feature of the new year to describe "fantastic species", I felt the time had come to put the spotlight on tardigrades. In the process, I learned that apart from individual specimens surviving the most horrendous physical conditions one can imagine, their lineage has also survived the last three of the five big mass extinctions. Hence it isn't even a an exaggeration to call the feature:
Ultimate survivors
Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 1, 6 January 2024, Pages R1-R3
Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)
Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)
See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.
Last year's thread is here .
No comments:
Post a Comment