When snow blankets the landscape, it may seem like life slows down. But beneath the surface, an entire world of activity is unfolding.

Soil is a significant carbon reservoir, storing more carbon than all plants, animals and the atmosphere combined, making it crucial for addressing the climate crisis. Microbes, such as bacteria and ...

"Like any good animal, we sense the change of seasons through a hundred subtle clues. Leaves change and shed, becoming crispy ...

URBANA, Ill. — There’s a complex world beneath our feet, teeming with diverse and interdependent life. Plants call out with chemical signals in times of stress, summoning microbes that can unlock ...

Soils store more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation combined, with soil microorganisms playing the main role. As a result, the global soil carbon cycle—by which carbon enters, moves through, ...

Researchers discovered that microbes respire three times as much CO2 from lignin carbons compared to cellulose carbons. When soil microbes eat plant matter, the digested food follows one of two ...

Locating diamond deposits in the earth isn't always an exact science, so the greater the number of methods of doing so, the better. A new study now suggests that soil microbes may point the way to ...

Red earthworm with roots in garden soil. Science is only beginning to understand soil-dwelling microbes — and their symbiotic relationship in plants. An entire world exists underground, inhabited by ...

Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall -- how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by microbiologists.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are already directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.27 million people every year, and these challenging infections contribute to the deaths of millions more ...

In a multi-generation experiment, researchers found microbes helped plants cope with drought, but not in response to plants' cries for help. Instead, the environment itself selected for ...