Psience Quest

Quote:Their new evidence comes from Fitak, who mined one of the largest genetic databases of microbes, known as the Metagenomic Rapid Annotations using Subsystems Technology database, for the presence of magnetotactic bacteria that had been found in animal samples.

Previous microbial diversity studies have often focused on large patterns of the presence or absence of bacteria phyla in animals rather than specific species, Fitak says.

"The presence of these magnetotactic bacteria had been largely overlooked, or 'lost in the mud' amongst the massive scale of these datasets," he says.

Fitak found, for the first time, that magnetotactic bacteria are associated with many animals, including a penguin species, loggerhead sea turtles, bats and Atlantic right whales.