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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

From hot and nutrient-poor deserts to alternating dry and wet intertidal zones, right through to the highest water pressure and permanent darkness in the deep sea: in the course of its development over millions of years, life has conquered even the most extreme places on earth.

[...] Life scientists around the world are currently investigating the manner in which the symbiotic interaction of microorganisms and hosts, in the functional unit of a metaorganism, supports the colonisation of such extreme habitats. An international research team under the leadership of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1182 "Origin and Function of Metaorganisms” at Kiel University has now presented an inventory of mechanisms, with which the interactions of hosts and symbionts support life under extreme environmental conditions, or even make it possible at all.

Together with colleagues from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the researchers have now described in detail for the first time in the scientific journal Zoology how microorganisms can promote the growth and the evolutionary fitness of different organisms in extreme locations.

An important factor in response to changing living conditions is time. If the environment at a particular place changes very quickly, for example through drastic change in physical and chemical conditions such as light or oxygen levels, the more highly-developed multicellular organisms in particular find the adjustment difficult. Their ability to adapt is too slow, because the required genetic change can only be completed over the course of several generations.

"Here microorganisms can give their host organisms an advantage," emphasised Professor Thomas Bosch, cell and developmental biologist at Kiel University and spokesperson for the CRC 1182. "With bacteria, for example, the evolutionary processes occur much more rapidly. They can partially transfer this ability to respond much faster to environmental changes to their hosts, and thereby assist the hosts with adaptation," continued Bosch.

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