See-Through Soil Substitutes Help Scientists Study Soil Ecology
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See-through soil substitutes help scientists study soil ecology:
To survive dry spells, bacteria rely on carbon from dead fungi, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal eLife.
Understanding soil ecology is vital to the study of forests, carbon cycles, climate change, sustainable agriculture and more. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to observe the behavior of soil microbes.
To get a better view of the biological activity going on beneath the soil surface, researchers made the soil see-through.
"To advance the study of soil processes, we used transparent soil substitutes that allowed us to use microscopes and other experimental techniques to see and measure the activity of soil bacteria and determine how this activity depends on the fungi," said lead study author Kriti Sharma said in a news release.
Sharma completed the study as a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina.
[...] "Overall, these transparent soil substitutes are powerful tools that will help us answer many outstanding questions in soil microbial ecology," she said.
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