Imagine a ground cracked by salt, burned by the sun’s rays and where rain never falls. Welcome to the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. It is so hostile that NASA uses it to simulate living conditions on Mars, where even tardigrades have difficulty thriving. However, a team of researchers has just discovered an underground world in which life flourishes.
Beneath the surface of this alien landscape, they discovered tiny worms, called nematodes. These multicellular animals, far from being simple microbes, circulate in the soil, regulate bacterial populations and participate in the movement of nutrients. But how do they survive where no one else can?
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The study, carried out by the University of Cologne (Germany) and published in Nature Communications, analyzed six different regions of this desert. Between the sand dunes and the salt plains, scientists discovered that the diversity of these little worms depended on a small, fragile balance.
Philipp Schiffer, co-author of the study, explains to The Debrief the importance of these findings: “Soils are important for the performance of an ecological system, for example for carbon storage and nutrient supply. That’s why it’s so important to understand the organisms—not the microbes, but the multicellular animals—that live there.»
These worms have developed strategies to make this desert their home. In the harshest areas, where it is almost impossible to find a partner, they have become asexual and reproduce through parthenogenesis. To put it simply: they clone themselves. This allows them to thrive without wasting time finding and seducing their partner.
The study nevertheless notes that in the driest areas, the diversity of nematode colonies present was lower. Dry areas virtually deprived of moisture provide less food and already fragile ecosystems are threatened. A trend that global warming obviously does not attenuate.
These resilient life forms could also help us adapt to the future of our planet. “In light of increasing global aridity, which affects more and more regions around the world, these results become increasingly relevant», concludes Philipp Schiffer. The soils in which Atacama nematodes thrive could soon be found elsewhere on Earth.
