Researchers have developed SuSha, a multi-model ensemble learning tool that predicts a microorganism's salt tolerance directly from its genome. Trained on the amino acid composition of 123 bacterial and archaeal species and validated on 2,678 metagenomes from freshwater, marine, and hypersaline habitats worldwide, SuSha achieved over 90% accuracy for extreme halophiles. It offers a powerful way to study the more than 81% of microbes that cannot be cultured in the lab.

Carbonate cerium and neodymium isotope records from South China show that low-oxygen waters invaded shallow habitats twice during the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction, with a brief recovery between the two pulses. Earth-system models suggest that rapid climate swings reorganized continental weathering and nutrient delivery, amplifying marine oxygen loss and ecological stress.

Precipitation plays an important role in glaciers and ice sheet behaviour. To establish the relationship between atmospheric climate variation, precipitation patterns and glacier and ice sheet behaviour beyond the observable past, a new MARUM-led study created a precipitation record for southern Greenland. The authors found that positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phases over at least the last circa 5,000 years consistently resulted in cooler but wetter conditions over southern Greenland. This in turn likely influenced local glacier advance or retreat, as well as the mass of the glaciers themselves. Their findings are now published in Nature Communications.

Two new studies led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography reveal how underwater acoustic enrichment — the playback of sounds from healthy reefs — can help spur the recovery of degraded coral reefs and their fish communities.