Seen and Unseen Discovering The Microbes of Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park is one of the world's truly extraordinary places. Its landscape, dominated by a great volcanic crater and sculpted over millennia by water and glacial ice, is host to a dramatically complex and diverse environment teeming with wildlife and plants. But there is more to Yellowstone's wonders than meets the eye. A nearly unexplored world awaits the curious in the park's streams and lakes, wetlands and beaver ponds, hot springs and geysers. Throughout the park are plants and animals too small to see individually but essential to the environment, such as the colonies of microbes forming green and orange gelatinous mats near La Duke Spring; the organisms living in the severe heat and sulfuric acid of Lemonade Creek; and the protozoa and algae along the shores of Twin Lakes. This is the world of microbes-the bacteria, algae, diatoms, and other microscopic organisms that live at the very foundation of the Yellowstone ecosystem. This book takes the reader on a spectacular and colorful tour of Yellowstone's microbial flora and fauna. Photographed using state-of-the-art technology, each microbe is presented with photographs of the environment where it's found. The reader will discover the amazing heat-tolerant bacteria that color many of the park's scalding hot springs, the microbes that allow a bison to digest grass, algae that thrive in acid, and microbial mats in every color of the rainbow. An eye-opener for adults and fascinating fun for kids, this book takes a unique approach in examining the natural history of America's greatest national park.Sheehan, Kathy B. is the author of 'Seen and Unseen Discovering The Microbes of Yellowstone', published 2005 under ISBN 9780762730933 and ISBN 0762730935.