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Scientists inside one of Antarctica’s historic huts. The wooden huts have survived for over 100 years in Antarctica\u2019s extreme environment, but they are still being damaged by UV light, wind, salt, and the growth of microorganisms such as moulds and soft-rot fungi.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
These wooden huts have survived for over 100 years in Antarctica\u2019s extreme environment, but they are still being damaged by\u00a0UV light<\/span>, wind,\u00a0salt<\/span>, and the growth of\u00a0microorganisms<\/span>\u00a0such as moulds and soft-rot\u00a0fungi<\/span>. Roberta, her students from the University of Waikato and her colleagues from the Universities of Minnesota (USA) and Bath (UK) are studying the processes of damage and decay, and informing\u00a0conservation<\/span>\u00a0treatment.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s the problem?<\/h2>\n
Roberta, a\u00a0biochemist<\/span>, is part of a\u00a0multidisciplinary<\/span>\u00a0research team. She works with microbiologists, wood chemists, biochemists and molecular biologists to collect data to discover just how the microorganisms that are damaging the huts can survive the sub-zero Antarctic winters. When temperatures rise above 0\u00baC, ice melt within the huts provides enough moisture for the fungi to grow and reproduce.<\/p>\nBecause of this, Antarctic Heritage Trust which has a major conservation programme in place, was worried that, if too many people visited the huts,\u00a0heat<\/span>\u00a0from their bodies and moisture from their breath could add to the problem. But the scientists recorded\u00a0temperature<\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0relative humidity<\/span> in the huts before, during and after groups of visitors, and found that the visits had no effect on the hut environment…..<\/p>\n\n
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During their research project, and the subject of the\u00a0PhD<\/span>\u00a0thesis of Shona Duncan, Roberta and her colleagues have taken more than 1,000 samples from within the huts and isolated\u00a0bacteria<\/span>\u00a0and fungi from 724 of them. These are stored in the University of Waikato Antarctic\u00a0culture<\/span>\u00a0collection. The scientists tested some of the fungi from their samples at a range of temperatures (4\u00baC\u201325\u00baC) to determine in what conditions they would grow. They found that all the organisms grew even at 4\u00baC, and three\u00a0species<\/span>\u00a0produced more new cells at 4\u00baC than at any other temperature \u2013 they were\u00a0cold adapted<\/span>\u00a0and even produced different\u00a0enzymes<\/span>\u00a0to digest the wood depending on the temperature.<\/p>\nSo far, the team have found that the historic Antarctic huts contain both introduced and\u00a0endemic<\/span>\u00a0fungi. These organisms are well\u00a0adapted<\/span>\u00a0to survive and reproduce in their harsh environment. Many of them cause decay in the timbers of the huts and in other items, such as boots and clothing, left by the early explorers. This poses a real challenge to people working to conserve the huts for the future.<\/p>\n\n
Read more….<\/a> and download the PDF\u00a0of graphs and images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Science Learning Hub reports on the work of a multinational team (K021) conducting research on Antarctica\u2019s historic huts, built by explorers like Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton in the early 20th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ihbc-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26668,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26666\/revisions\/26668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Science Learning Hub reports on the work of a multinational team (K021) conducting research on Antarctica\u2019s historic huts, built by explorers like Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton in the early 20th century.<\/h3>\n