BookMaría Eugenia Farías, editor.
Summary: The Central Andean Altiplane represents a unique extreme environment due to its high altitude, closed basins that modulate the salt pans and saline wetlands surrounded by deserts, as well as the considerable influence of volcanic activity. UV radiation, arsenic content, high salinity, alkalinity and low dissolved oxygen levels, together with extreme daily temperature fluctuations and oligotrophic conditions, shape an environment that resembles the early Earth and, even more, extraterrestrial conditions. By developing simple biofilms stratified microbial mats or complex microbialites, extreme microbial ecosystems, colonize and thrived in different environments like salt flats, wetlands, lakes volcano vents, geysers and deserts. This book presents our current understanding of these amazing ecosystems, providing a basis for their protection and sustainable utilization. The main audience for this book included researchers and graduate students as well as professionals working in the government, mining industry and similar activities. -- Provided by publisher.
Contents:
[I]. General considerations: Origin and evolution of the Central Andes : deserts, salars, lakes, and volcanoes / Ricardo N. Alonso, Walter Rojas
Modern microbial mats and endoevaporite systems in Andean lakes : a general approach / María Eugenia Farías, Luis Alberto Saona Acuña. [II]. Preandean and Andean Atacama Desert : life at limits: The desert polyextreme environment and endolithic habits / Jacek Wierzchos, Carmen Ascaso, Octavio Artieda, María Cristina Casero
Preandean Atacama desert endolithic microbiology / María Cristina Casero, Victoria Meslier, Jacek Wierzchos, Jocelyne DiRuggiero
Desert biosignatures / Petr Vítek, Jacek Wierzchos
Microbial characterization of Andean peatland's soil / Carolina Belfiore, Ana Paula Santos, Alejandra Leonor Valdez, Manuel Contreras Leiva, María Eugenia Farías. [III]. Life in Andean volcanoes and fumaroles: Of microbes and mummies : tales of microbial activity and inactivity at 6000 m a.s.l. / Steven K. Schmidt, Preston Sowell, Zachary R. Schubert, Lara Vimercati, Adam J. Solon, Dorota L. Porazinska et al.
A unique natural laboratory to study polyextremophile microorganisms : Diamante Lake as a window to the origin of life / Tatiana Stepanenko, Mariana N. Soria, Luis Alberto Saona Acuña, Agustina I. Lencina, María Eugenia Farías. [IV]. Evaporitic microbial ecosystems at salars : living in the salt: Microbial communities composition, activity, and dynamics at Salar de Huasco : a polyextreme environment in the Chilean Altiplano / Cristina Dorador, Verónica Molina, Martha Hengst, Yoanna Eissler, Marcela Cornejo, Camila Fernández et al.
Prokaryotic diversity at the hypersaline Laguna Tebenquiche in the Salar de Atacama, Chile / Ana Beatriz Fernández, Pieter T. Visscher, María Cecilia Rasuk, Manuel Contreras Leiva, María Eugenia Farías
Complete characterization of stratified ecosystems of the Salar de Llamara (Atacama Desert) / María Cecilia Rasuk, Manuel Contreras Leiva, Daniel Kurth, María Eugenia Farías
Microbial diversity in Athalassohaline Argentinean salterns / Merit del Rocío Mora-Ruiz, Carlos Díaz-Gil. [V]. Carbonatic microbialites at Central Andean lakes: Characterization of microbialites and microbial mats of the Laguna Negra hypersaline lake (Puna of Catamarca, Argentina) / Flavia Jaquelina Boidi, Estela Cecilia Mlewski, Fernando Javier Gomez, Emmanuelle Gérard
Extreme microbiology at Laguna Socompa : a high-altitude Andean lake (3570 m a.s.l.) in Salta, Argentina / Virginia Helena Albarracín, Fátima Silvina Galván, María Eugenia Farías
Mats and microbialites from Laguna La Brava / María Cecilia Rasuk, Pieter T. Visscher, Manuel Contreras Leiva, María Eugenia Farías
The carbonate system in hypersaline lakes : the case of Laguna Negra (in the Puna Region of Catamarca, Argentina) / Fernando Javier Gomez, Flavia Jaquelina Boidi, Estela Cecilia Mlewski, Emmanuelle Gérard. [VI]. Generalities and particularities of microbial ecosystems at the Central the Andes: Integral prospection of Andean microbial ecosystem project / María Eugenia Farías, Patricio G. Villafañe, Agustina I. Lencina
Linear megaplasmids spreading in the Andean resistome / Martin Wagenknecht, María Florencia Pérez, Julián Rafael Dib
Arsenic and its biological role : From early Earth to current Andean microbial ecosystems / Luis Alberto Saona Acuña, Mariana N. Soria, Patricio G. Villafañe, Tatiana Stepanenko, María Eugenia Farías.