Planet Earth: Through A Microscope

You may be familiar with the earthworms you see in your garden, but did you know that there are worms that can jump? Or that others can crawl over rocks using their very own grappling hooks? In this talk we’ll explore the diversity of some of the Earth’s weirdest but most wonderful animals, worms. We’ll delve into the ancient history of worms over 550 million years ago and how, since then, they have diversified into every shape you can imagine, from the bizarre “pigbutt” worms that float around in the open ocean to the Christmas tree worms found in coral reefs.

With the human population rising, securing our global food supply has never been more urgent. Crops face threats from harmful bacteria, while current disease-control methods can harm the environment and promote antibiotic resistance. I’ll show how naturally predatory bacteria, like Bdellovibrio, can protect plants and may help reduce resistant microbes, offering sustainable solutions for plant disease. Could these microscopic predators help safeguard both our food and our future? Join me to discover the hidden microbial allies of Planet Earth.

Archaea are microbes that can survive everywhere you think nothing lives. My work is based on water from Icelandic hot springs with hyperacidothermophiles, those that thrive in hot, acidic environments. I study how these microbial communities evolve together using HoTEEs (Hot-Temperature Evolutionary Experiments). Early results show survival isn’t always a guarantee. Populations grow, fall, and die out, reshaping communities over time, revealing how life persists at its limits!

I’ll share a set of small but exciting projects that reveal the power of the scanning electron microscope (SEM). By using electrons, SEM uncovers surface details as fine as 1-2m - about 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Its extraordinary depth of focus (often 100 times greater than optical microscopes, due to their small aperture angles) allows nearly the entire surface of rough, 3D samples to appear in sharp focus simultaneously. I’ll touch on the core principles of SEM imaging and show how advanced SEM techniques are reshaping modern biological science.