Seen and Unseen: Discovering The Microbes Of Yellowstone

Seen and Unseen: Discovering The Microbes Of Yellowstone by Sheehan, Kathy. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780762730933.

Yellowstone National Park is one of the worlds truly extraordinary places. Its landscape, dominated by a great volcanic caldera and sculpted over millennia by water and glacial ice, is host to a dramatically complex flora and fauna. But there is more to Yellowstones wonders than meets the eye. A nearly unexplored world awaits the curious in the parks streams and lakes, wetlands and beaver ponds, hot springs and geysers. 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 readers on a spectacular and colorful tour of Yellowstones microbial flora and fauna. Photographed using state-of-art technology, each microbe pictured in the book is presented together with photographs of the environment in which the organism is found. Readers will discover the amazing heat-tolerant bacteria that color many of the parks 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, Yellowstone under the Microscope is a unique approach to the natural history of Americas greatest national park.