Ariel Waldman

To your point, you know, in the North Pole, we don't have a continent there.

It's ice.

So we've got this weird combination of Antarctica being very icy because it's at the bottom of the world, but also the continent itself moved down there.

I can speak to the microorganisms and there are so many different species of tardigrades across the world.

But in Antarctica and in the dry valleys, there's a couple of different species and you get milnesium tardigrades that are predator tardigrades.

They eat bacteria and moss, but they also eat, you know, nematodes and smaller tardigrades, which is terrifying to think about tardigrade eating another tardigrade.

I know.

They are definitely like the kings of the jungle, so to speak.

And then you have other tardigrades, though, like Acotuncus, that is an herbivore.

Only eats moss, only eats bacteria.

And so you really have these mini ecosystems where you do have meat eaters, so to speak, and your herbivores.

And you can sort of see what does it take

for an ecosystem to get started?

What does it take for it to be sustainable over time?

And you can see it at its kind of most fundamental level.

Yeah, so in the dry valleys, you don't have any vascular plants.

So, you know, grasses are things that you would come to expect, but you have microscopic moss.

So you can see these tiny little moss leaves.

You have microbial mats, which aren't plants, but they're this slimy layer cake of different microorganisms, you know, together.

And you get photosynthesis at sort of the top of the microbial mat.