Rock weathering creates oases of life in a high Arctic desert.

During primary colonization of rock substrates by plants, mineral weathering is strongly accelerated under plant roots, but little is known on how it affects soil ecosystem development before plant establishment. Here we show that rock mineral weathering mediated by chemolithoautotrophic bacteria is associated to plant community formation in sites recently released by permanent glacier ice cover in the Midtre Lovénbreen glacier moraine (78 degrees 53'N), Svalbard. Increased soil fertility fosters growth of prokaryotes and plants at the boundary between sites of intense bacterial mediated chemolithotrophic iron-sulfur oxidation and pH decrease, and the common moraine substrate where carbon and nitrogen are fixed by cyanobacteria.

Differential patterns of evolution and distribution of the symbiotic behaviour in nostocacean cyanobacteria.

Many cyanobacteria commonly identified as belonging to the genus Nostoc are well-known cyanobionts (symbionts) of a wide variety of plants and fungi. They form symbioses with bryophytes, pteridophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms that are considerably different in the type of reciprocal interaction between the host and the cyanobiont. The phylogenetic and taxonomic relationships among cyanobionts isolated from different hosts and Nostoc strains isolated from free-living conditions are still not well understood.