Shelby Trainer
speaker
126 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2026
last heard 3d ago
Shelby Trainer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So you grab this paper bark from the tree outside.
Can you tell me the microbes that might be in a paper bark like this?
For a long time, bark has been seen as the tough exterior protecting trees from damage and disease.
Nothing more.
But recently, researchers have discovered a whole world of microorganisms living in bark that play a greater role, not only in the life of the tree, but in life on Earth.
Dr.
Luke Jeffrey is at Southern Cross University researching the biological, geological, and chemical processes going on in forests.
In particular, he looks at greenhouse gases, starting in wetland forests.
Luke was looking into all the ways methane escapes wetlands from the water and the surrounding vegetation.
While he was doing this work, Luke and the wider team realized they'd overlooked an important factor in all of this: trees.
Methanotrophs are microbes that consume methane for energy.
They've been found in wetland soils and sediments, but nobody had looked for them before in tree bark.
Dr.
Bob Lung was more than keen to take a look.
Bob received the samples of tree bark and went to work.
I'd assumed Bob would be looking at these microbes through a microscope, but it turns out sampling their DNA could tell him much more.
The microbes living in the bark weren't just hungry for methane, they really really liked hydrogen in particular.
Nice.
So they're happy microbes when they're given those gases.
So you know oh this is the role that they're playing, as well as having like the idea from the DNA analysis that's
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