著者

瀬戸 繭美

出版者

一般社団法人日本地球化学会

雑誌

地球化学 (ISSN:03864073)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.4, pp.185-193, 2017-12-25 (Released:2017-12-25)

参考文献数

56

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Biogeochemistry is the study of how organisms alter the earth's surface geochemical processes. Meanwhile, ecosystem ecology is the study of how materials and energy flow and are stored among organisms and environments. Although there is significant crossover between these two fields, some research topics are not overlapped. For instance, chemoautotrophic microorganisms that harness energy from redox reactions and gain carbon from inorganic carbon substances are of geochemical interest because of their catalytic effects on biogeochemical reactions, whereas those communities have not seemed to get much ecological attentions. Two reasons can potentially explain this; 1) the main target organisms in ecology have been flora and fauna, and their carbon storage and cycling is a cornerstone concept of ecosystem ecology; 2) the difficulty in oveservation and isolation of chemoautotrophic microorganisms have long inhibited the progress of their ecological understanding. In bringing together the biogeochemical and ecological perspectives, however, recent studies have accelerated our understanding the interactions between the ecology of chemolithoautotrophs and material flows for the last decade.