| Description: |
About five and a half million years ago the Mediterranean sea dried up. This resulted in salty sediment, in basins which were covered by sea water as the area reflooded. Salts from these basins are slowly leaching out but, since this water is denser than the surrounding sea, they are unmixable. The ciliate plankton which live in these brines all began from the same stock, but over time have had the potential to evolve differently. Researchers investigated how isolated these communities are, and whether there has been mixing between them and the surrounding ciliates in the sea. [Source: BioMed Central]
|
 |
