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Microorganisms help to keep the water of lakes clean. In the process, they also detoxify the nitrogen compound ammonium, which is introduced into water bodies by fertilizers, for example, and is also produced naturally by metabolic processes. An international team led by the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ) with IGB researchers Hans-Peter Grossart and Danny Ionescu has now shown that this detoxification of ammonium in the depths of European lakes is only sustained by an extremely small number of specific archaebacteria species.

Urbanization goes hand in hand with a considerable sealing of soils. About 20 percent of the newly sealed area is not in urban areas, but in rural areas. However, calculations of nutrient fluxes into water bodies have not taken these new sealings in rural areas into account, because these are often based on land use maps and consider urban areas.

Routine fishing on 29 November this year was the first large inventory conducted in the middle of the Oder since the man-made environmental disaster that occurred in summer. The result: much fewer fish were caught in total, and species such as the blue bream and the asp, which are important to this ecosystem, were lacking completely. Moreover, water analysis conducted by the researchers shows that the salt concentration is still far too high. There could be a repeat of the disaster when temperatures increase, endangering remaining stocks.

Rutynowe połowy 29 listopada br. były pierwszą poważną inwentaryzacją w środkowym biegu Odry po spowodowanej przez człowieka katastrofie ekologicznej w lecie. Efekt: ogólnie złowiono znacznie mniej ryb, a gatunki ważne dla tego ekosystemu, takie jak rozpiór i boleń, były zupełnie nieobecne. Z analiz wody przeprowadzonych przez badaczy wynika również, że stężenie soli jest nadal wyraźnie za wysokie. Wraz ze wzrostem temperatur katastrofa może się powtórzyć, co spowoduje zagrożenie dla ryb, które przeżyły.

No life has yet been found on Mars, but it is exciting to explore under what circumstances it might be possible. A team has studied the cellular processes that regulate the adaptation of microorganisms to perchlorates. If microorganisms could genetically adapt their stress response to this salt, which occurs in some deserts and on Mars, their survival on the red planet would be possible.

The quality of lake ice is of paramount importance for ice safety and lake ecology under ice, but its temporal and spatial variability is largely unknown. An international research team with IGB researcher Hans-Peter Grossart conducted a coordinated sampling campaign of lake ice quality throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The team, led by Sweden's Uppsala University, was able to show that lake ice during this period generally consisted of unstable white ice, which at times accounted for up to 100 percent of the total ice thickness.

A team of researchers from IGB and the Cluster of Excellence "Science of Intelligence" at the Humboldt University zu Berlin has now shown for the first time in naturally clonal fish that genetically identical individuals already differ in their character traits on the first day of life and that these early character differences significantly shape the behavior of the animals into adulthood. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

A Chinese team, in collaboration with IGB researcher Sabine Hilt, has shown in a large mesocosm experiment how heat waves, nutrients and pesticides promote algae growth and cause aquatic plants to dwindle. This shift in plant types may increase the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions from shallow lakes, as Sabine Hilt and Dutch colleagues demonstrated in another mesocosm experiment.