Cuatro Ciénegas Ecology, Natural History and Microbiology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. A Microbial Saga: How to Study an Unexpected Hot Spot of Microbial Biodiversity from Scratch?

   • Valeria Souza, Luis E. Eguiarte, James J. Elser, Michael Travisano, Gabriela Olmedo-Álvarez

   Pages 1-20

3. In the Beginning, There Was Fire: Cuatro Ciénegas Basin (CCB) and the Long History of Life on Earth

   • Valeria Souza, Luis E. Eguiarte

   Pages 21-33

4. The Climate of Cuatro Ciénegas Basin: Drivers and Temporal Patterns

   • Cristina Montiel-González, Francisco Bautista, Carmen Delgado, Felipe García-Oliva

   Pages 35-42

5. Hyperdiverse Viral Communities in an Oligotrophic Oasis (Cuatro Ciénegas): Marine Affinities and Microgeographic Differentiation

   • P. Isa, B. Taboada, A. L. Gutiérrez, P. Chávez, R. M. del Ángel, J. E. Ludert et al.

   Pages 43-55

6. How Divergent Is the Cuatro Ciénegas Oasis? Genomic Studies of Microbial Populations and Niche Differentiation

   • Zulema Gomez-Lunar, Mirna Vázquez-Rosas-Landa, Gabriel Yaxal Ponce-Soto, Alejandra Moreno-Letelier, Gabriela Olmedo-Álvarez, Luis E. Eguiarte et al.

   Pages 57-71

7. The Niche at the Edge of Life or the Microbial Ecology (Including Microfungi) of Cuatro Ciénegas: Mutualisms with Locals, Antagonisms Against Foreigners

   • Patricia Vélez, Laura Espinosa-Asuar, Michael Travisano, Luis E. Eguiarte, Valeria Souza

   Pages 73-82

8. Microcosms and Mesocosms: A Way to Test the Resilience of Microbial Communities in Cuatro Ciénegas

   • Nguyen E. López-Lozano, Silvia Pajares, Ana E. Escalante, Luis E. Eguiarte, Valeria Souza, Gabriela Olmedo-Álvarez

   Pages 83-102

9. Single Genus Approach to Understanding Bacterial Diversity, Niche, Distribution, and Genomics: The Bacillus in Cuatro Ciénegas

   • Maria Dolores Rodriguez Torres, Luis David Alcaraz, Valeria Souza, Gabriela Olmedo-Álvarez

   Pages 103-112

10. Bioprospecting in Cuatro Cienegas: A Set of Open Possibilities to Save the Ecosystem

    • Héctor Arocha-Garza, Hamlet Avilés-Arnaut, Nahui Olin Medina-Chávez, Mario Figueroa, Valeria Souza, Susana De la Torre-Zavala

    Pages 113-127

11. Back Matter

    Pages 129-134

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The aim of this first book is to introduce the readers of the series to why Cuatro Ciénegas Basin (CCB) is so unique, starting with the reason why astrobiologists became interested in this oasis in the first place; namely, the high diversity and abundance of stromatolites and microbial mats in continental waters to be found in the desert oasis. As NASA has long since discovered, the basin may offer the best analog of early Earth. In essence, CCB is a time machine that can take us far back and forth in time. In the respective chapters, the contributing authors explain the extraordinary microbial diversity of Cuatro Ciénegas Basin from various perspectives. In order to do so, they explain their journey as well as the different tools used to unravel the basin’s mysteries, such as: Why are there so many species in a place without food? How has life there survived the enormity of tectonic shifts through the ages, maintaining its ancient marine heritage?

• Astrobiology
• Microbial diversity
• Conservation policy
• Stromatolites and Microbial Mats
• Desert oasis
• climate change

• Ecology Institute, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

  Valeria Souza, Luis E. Eguiarte

• Laboratorio de Bacteriología Molecular, Departamento de Ingeniería Genética, CINVESTAV – Unidad Irapuato, Irapuato, Mexico

  Gabriela Olmedo-Álvarez

Valeria Souza was born in Mexico City and completed her bachelor’s degree in Biology, master’s degree in Genetics and PhD in Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In 1990 Valeria went to Irvine California (UCI) to work with Rich Lenski and learn experimental evolution. In 1993, she took on a research position at UNAM in Mexico, where she still works today. Her field is Evolutionary Ecology of Microbes and when Valeria completed her PhD, there were no other researchers studying it in Mexico, and very few in the world. As a young researcher, she received a MacArthur fellowship to investigate the role of women in biodiversity and she chose to explore how domestications had changed microbial populations and published a paper on ethnomicrobiology. At the same time she began exploring the role of bacterial sex in the evolution of the pathogenicity in E. coli comparing human related strains with wild animal isolates. In 1999, all of those more predictable trails in academia changed when Valeria and her family were invited by NASA to explore a new world in a journey that led them to the depths of microbial biodiversity in an unlikely oasis in the Chihuahuan desert.
Dr. Gabriela Olmedo studied Biology at Universidad Autónoma de México, and she obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A  in 1990. In May 1990 she started working as an independent researcher at Cinvestav Unidad Irapuato. Using biochemical and genetic strategies her group has described some mechanisms involved in the decay of mRNAs as well as those required for maturation of tRNA, mainly in the bacterial model Bacillus subtilis. Her group is also interested in understanding community interactions and ecological adaptations of bacteria, particularly of the Bacillus genus. Some of the main models for study are the microbial communities in aquatic systems of Cuatro cienegas, Coahuila, Mexico. With her collaborators, she has also employed microbial, genomi

c, and metagenomic approaches to reveal the species and gene pools that dominate different sediment and water systems. Her group has also maintained the Ciencia Viva scientific workshop for undergraduate students for fifteen years. She was chair of the Department of Genetic Engineering at Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados del I.P.N., Unidad Irapuato from 2007 to 2013, and has since been the director there.

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