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The Importance of the Rare Biosphere for Astrobiological Studies and the Diversification and Resilience of Life on Earth

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Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth

Part of the book series: Cuatro Ciénegas Basin: An Endangered Hyperdiverse Oasis ((CUCIBA))

Abstract

Let’s travel in our mind eye to either early Earth or Mars: life had already evolved, but it was most probably patchy and hard to find; it was likely rare. We can even imagine the same process in exoplanets or moons, life starting as an organic oddity that eventually starts to evolve by Darwinian evolution, consuming resources to grow and reproduce. Under that scenario, we can speculate that after the last universal common ancestor, LUCA, diversified locally, life kept on diversifying in a multitude of non-abundant lineages that were locally adapted and perhaps may explain why we see such early radiation in the tree of life. Therefore, life started as a rare event and the rare biosphere, that represent most of the taxonomic and functional diversity in actual microbial communities, probably represents the way communities have organized themselves since the beginning of the conquest of the Earth. In this chapter, we will explain what it means to have a low abundance in a community, how we study rarity, and why it is relevant for astrobiology.

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Acknowledgments

This project was funded by PAPITT-DGPA grant IG200319 to VS and LEW. We want to thank Laura Espinosa-Asuar and Erika Aguirre-Planter for technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

    Jazmín Sánchez-Pérez, Bernardo Águila, Marisol Navarro-Miranda, Mariette Viladomat, Maria Kalambokidis, Luis E. Eguiarte & Valeria Souza

  2. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, DC, Colombia

    Juan Diego Villar & Julián Felipe Cifuentes

  3. Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores, Unidad Morelia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico

    Nohely Alvarez-López

  4. Facultad de Estudios Superiores Iztacala, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Tlalnepantla, Estado de México, Mexico

    Jhoselinne Buenrostro & Ana G. Cruz-Cruz

  5. Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

    Luis J. Chino-Palomo

  6. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

    Benjamín Vega-Baray

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  1. Jazmín Sánchez-Pérez
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Correspondence to Valeria Souza .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

    Valeria Souza

  2. Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico

    Antígona Segura

  3. Space Life Sciences Lab, University of Florida, Merritt Island, FL, USA

    Jamie S. Foster

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Sánchez-Pérez, J. et al. (2020). The Importance of the Rare Biosphere for Astrobiological Studies and the Diversification and Resilience of Life on Earth. In: Souza, V., Segura, A., Foster, J. (eds) Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth. Cuatro Ciénegas Basin: An Endangered Hyperdiverse Oasis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46087-7_6

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