Significant impacts on cave microclimate from large populations of the bat Rousettus aegyptiacus have been documented in three simple caves in pyroclastic rock of Mount Elgon National Park, Kenya, one of which, Kitum Cave, with few bats, acts as a control, indicating microclimatic variations in the absence of significant biological activity. Seven days of temperature logger records, and on-site mapping of rock and air temperature, humidity, and air flow provide the basis for modeling of heat, water, and CO 2 production and dispersion. Internal temperatures in the presence of bats in Mackingeny Cave and Ngwarisha Cave rise to ~18 °C above ambient (from ~12 °C to ~30 °C), but in the control site by only ~2 °C. Excess bat-generated energy is dissipated by conduction to rock and by ongoing air circulation, the strongest of which accompanies bat entry and exit flights. In Kitum Cave, temperatures that are substantially lower than bat thermo-neutral zone raise concern for Allee effects on long-term colony fitness: Modeling indicates that a population of at least 100,000 bats should promote colony vitality. Metabolic outputs were modeled to yield corrosional potential: At these population densities, were the caves in limestone, rates of surface denudation caused directly by metabolic outputs would be 1 m in ~80,000 yr. These results confirm that tropical bats can be effective niche constructionists, by optimizing microclimatic roost conditions, by longer-term bioerosional optimization of rock surfaces for roosting, and by long-term niche engineering through zoo-speleogenetic enlargement of roost volume.

Abstract The U.S. Army will continue to be involved in desert warfare for the foreseeable future. It is imperative that military equipment is designed and tested for use in this environment; that soldiers are trained to operate in the desert; and that they can accomplish their missions under the extreme conditions presented by this distinct operating environment. Understanding desert processes and terrain is fundamental to accomplishing these goals. Scientists have long debated demarcation and classification of deserts, considering many measurable factors. However, few have classified deserts in a way that specifically supports the military missions of operating, training, and testing. This research was undertaken to classify deserts using both physical and military variables and to develop a system that examines deserts from a military perspective. A panel of scientists and military officers developed and tested a model of warm and hot desert classification. The robustness of the model was tested at the Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, and the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. This work is a preliminary step toward a thorough examination of desert training and testing sites and potential conflict areas in desert locations throughout the world.

Science has achieved tremendous success over the centuries, partly because the complexities of the Earth, the physical processes that sustain the planet, and the enormity of life were separated into disparate fields of study—mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and geology, to name only a few. Scientific compartmentalization was initially necessary to impart enough focus to make progress on complicated issues. However, as the knowledge base grew, it became more and more difficult to separate life and the history of the Earth, and vice versa. We now understand that to investigate the Earth's surface as an abiologic system is folly: Life and Earth processes are intimately linked. Hence, a new field was born at the interface between biology and geology: geobiology. As a field, geobiology seeks to understand the intersection of life and the rock record across Earth's history: how organisms influence the physical Earth and vice versa, and how the marriage of physical and biological processes have transformed our planet over its long history. The assessment of life's macromolecules of DNA, RNA, polysaccharides, proteins, and lipids, and their potential recalcitrance in an ecosystem, has opened up the field of geobiology to lead us toward a solid explanation of where life came from, how life has altered the planet, what may be possible for life elsewhere, and what represents one of the reasons for the explosion of geobiologic studies today. Here we outline how molecular biology has transformed our understanding of geobiology, describing a few of the essentials needed to understand geobiology and exploring an example of a modern geobiologically relevant system: a living stromatolite from the shore of a geothermal hot spring in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA.

Discoveries in geobiology have dramatically shaped our understanding of the nature, distribution, and evolutionary potential of terrestrial life, paving the way for new exploration strategies to search for life elsewhere in the Solar System. Genomic studies, applied over a broad range of geological environments, have revealed that the vast proportion of species on Earth are microbial. Studies of the fossil record indicate that this has been the case for >75% of our planet's history. Microbial life has been shown to occupy a stunning array of environmental extremes, seemingly only limited by the distribution of liquid water and its chemical activity, nutrient availability, suitable energy sources, radiation, etc. Advances in geomicrobiology have revealed important contributions of microbial processes to many global biogeochemical cycles, and in the evolution of Earth's atmospheric and surface composition. The discovery of a subsurface biosphere, fueled by inorganic chemical energy and able to tolerate extremes in temperature and salinity, has been especially important in opening up new horizons for the astrobiological exploration of Mars, as well as icy satellites of the outer Solar System. Although the environment of life's origin remains uncertain, molecular studies suggest that the last common ancestor of life probably lived in hydrothermal environments where it utilized simple compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur as sources of chemical energy. This general view is consistent with what we know about late Hadean to early Archean environments on the Earth, as well as model-based interpretations of late, giant impacts that could have exterminated early mesophilic (and possibly photosynthetic) surface life forms, leaving behind only deep subsurface chemotrophic thermophilic microbial communities to re-populate the biosphere. These and related discoveries have contributed extensively to the view that life could be much more broadly distributed, within the Solar System and beyond, than once thought. We now believe it possible that life may have become established in surface environments on Mars during the first half billion years of the planet's history, when liquid water was widespread there. Furthermore, a subsurface hydrosphere on Mars (suggested by both models and geomorphic evidence) may have provided a continuously habitable zone for life over most of Martian history and could still support an active, deep biosphere on Mars today. Exploration of the outer Solar System supports the presence of saline brines (perhaps oceans) beneath the icy crusts of Europa, Callisto, and possibly Ganymede, along with plausible energy sources for life based on chemical disequilibria between oxidized and reduced compounds. It also appears that interior zones of liquid water may also exist on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, while hydrocarbon oceans of liquid methane discovered on Titan may provide alternative solvents for novel life forms completely unlike anything found on Earth. Ongoing efforts to systematically explore potentially habitable environments elsewhere in our Solar System have helped catalyze the development of astrobiology, an emerging interdisciplinary science that seeks to understand the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the cosmos. Geobiology, which studies interactions of biological and physical-chemical systems and how they have evolved over the history of Earth, is a central focus of astrobiology, providing fertile ground for the growth of conceptual models and new technological tools needed to implement the search for extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the Solar System.

Abstract In this chapter, we describe the history of foraminiferal research in Japan. We divided the history of Japanese foraminiferal research into two periods, before and after World War II when a strong regime shift actually took place. We also include a modern history, paying attention to recent biological investigation.