ArticleScientific reports2018
Unprecedented rains decimate surface microbial communities in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 24 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Dormancy as a Signature of Microbial Community Disassembly during Hydrological Collapse in a Desert Oasis.Microbial ecology · 2026Article
- Intracranial volume variation in Chinchorro mummies: a comparative study with pre-hispanic farmers and contemporary Chilean populations.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Domain-specific osmoadaptation revealed by metatranscriptomic analysis in hypersaline environments.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Karakum desert: a unique source of cultivable novel and rare actinomycetes with a remarkable biosynthetic potential.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2025Article
- Persistent microbial communities in hyperarid subsurface habitats of the Atacama Desert: Insights from intracellular DNA analysis.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Microbial impact on initial soil formation in arid and semiarid environments under simulated climate change.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
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- Article
- The Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies (ARADS) Project.Astrobiology · 2023Article
- Dark microbiome and extremely low organics in Atacama fossil delta unveil Mars life detection limits.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Nitrogen Cycling and Biosignatures in a Hyperarid Mars Analog Environment.Astrobiology · 2022Article
- Spatial Variability of Microbial Communities and Salt Distributions Across a Latitudinal Aridity Gradient in the Atacama Desert.Microbial ecology · 2021Article
- The soil crisis: the need to treat as a global health problem and the pivotal role of microbes in prophylaxis and therapy.Microbial biotechnology · 2021Article
- Distinct ecotypes within a natural haloarchaeal population enable adaptation to changing environmental conditions without causing population sweeps.The ISME journal · 2021Article
- Influence of Physical-Chemical Soil Parameters on Microbiota Composition and Diversity in a Deep Hyperarid Core of the Atacama Desert.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Inhabited subsurface wet smectites in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert as an analog for the search for life on Mars.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Metabolt: An In-Situ Instrument to Characterize the Metabolic Activity of Microbial Soil Ecosystems Using Electrochemical and Gaseous Signatures.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Halophilic microbial community compositional shift after a rare rainfall in the Atacama Desert.The ISME journal · 2019Article
- Nitrates as a Potential N Supply for Microbial Ecosystems in a Hyperarid Mars Analog System.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Aeolian transport of viable microbial life across the Atacama Desert, Chile: Implications for Mars.Scientific reports · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
13 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert, the driest and oldest desert on Earth, has experienced a number of highly unusual rain events over the past three years, resulting in the formation of previously unrecorded hypersaline lagoons, which have lasted several months. We have systematically analyzed the evolution of the lagoons to provide quantitative field constraints of large-scale impacts of the rains on the local microbial communities. Here we show that the sudden and massive input of water in regions that have remained hyperarid for millions of years is harmful for most of the surface soil microbial species, which are exquisitely adapted to survive with meager amounts of liquid water, and quickly perish from osmotic shock when water becomes suddenly abundant. We found that only a handful of bacteria, remarkably a newly identified species of Halomonas, remain metabolically active and are still able to reproduce in the lagoons, while no archaea or eukaryotes were identified. Our results show that the already low microbial biodiversity of extreme arid regions greatly diminishes when water is supplied quickly and in great volumes. We conclude placing our findings in the context of the astrobiological exploration of Mars, a hyperarid planet that experienced catastrophic floodings in ancient times.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.