Word: speciesism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Say what you will about the simple, uninteresting lives of microorganisms, they're tough little critters. You try surviving for a million and a half years without heat, food or sunlight and see how you do. A team of National Science Foundation researchers just discovered a species of Antarctic organisms...
The fact that organisms can survive in extreme - seemingly lethal - conditions is nothing new. Researchers have found creatures living at boiling vents on the floor of the ocean, in desert sands that virtually never see water; fossilized remains of microorganisms have even been found inside of rocks. Antarctic life, however...
What there was, however, was life. The samples Mikucki collected did not teem with a riot of different microbial species the way ocean water does, but there was at least one species, thriving and dividing and doing all of the other things single-celled species do. "How [were] they able...
The trick, she found, was that they learned how to change their diet. When Mikucki studied the organisms' DNA and energy-processing systems, she found that they were indeed descended from species that once lived in the open ocean. Underneath the ice, they were deprived of light to run photosynthesis...
The waters they sought to protect, says Lehr, were "an El Dorado for fishing fleets of many nations." A 2006 study published in the journal Science predicted that the current rate of commercial fishing would virtually empty the world's oceanic stocks by 2050. Yet, Somalia's seas still offer...