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. 2023 Feb 8;13(1):1423.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-28327-3.

Ecological successions throughout the desiccation of Tirez lagoon (Spain) as an astrobiological time-analog for wet-to-dry transitions on Mars

Alberto G Fairén  1   2 , Nuria Rodríguez  3   4 , Laura Sánchez-García  3 , Patricia Rojas  5 , Esther R Uceda  5 , Daniel Carrizo  3 , Ricardo Amils  3   4   5 , José L Sanz  6
Affiliations

Ecological successions throughout the desiccation of Tirez lagoon (Spain) as an astrobiological time-analog for wet-to-dry transitions on Mars

Alberto G Fairén et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Tirez was a small and seasonal endorheic athalassohaline lagoon that was located in central Spain. In recent years, the lagoon has totally dried out, offering for the first time the opportunity to analyze its desiccation process as a "time-analog" to similar events occurred in paleolakes with varying salinity during the wet-to-dry transition on early Mars. On the martian cratered highlands, an early period of water ponding within enclosed basins evolved to a complete desiccation of the lakes, leading to deposition of evaporitic sequences during the Noachian and into the Late Hesperian. As Tirez also underwent a process of desiccation, here we describe (i) the microbial ecology of Tirez when the lagoon was still active 20 years ago, with prokaryotes adapted to extreme saline conditions; (ii) the composition of the microbial community in the dried lake sediments today, in many case groups that thrive in sediments of extreme environments; and (iii) the molecular and isotopic analysis of the lipid biomarkers that can be recovered from the sediments today. We discuss the implications of these results to better understanding the ecology of possible Martian microbial communities during the wet-to-dry transition at the end of the Hesperian, and how they may inform about research strategies to search for possible biomarkers in Mars after all the water was lost.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Artistic impression showing ancient lakes ponded on Mars (credit: G. Di Achille, University of Colorado); (B) photograph of Tirez taken in 2002, when the lake was still active; (C) detection of evaporite salts in shallow basins in Meridiani (for interpretation, see Ref.); (D) dry Tirez as it looks today, showing the evaporite salts, and an inset detailing the drilled sediments for this study.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Pie charts of phylogenetic profiles for Bacteria Domain in Tirez sediments analyzed in 2021, at phylum (A), order (B), family (C) and genus (D) level. Taxa with a coverage lower than 1% of the total number of sequences have been grouped as “Others”. OTUs have been defined at specie level (97% similarity cutoff).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mass chromatograms (represented as total ion current) of the three polarity fractions extracted from the dry sediments in the Tirez lagoon in 2021; (A) apolar fraction containing linear and saturated (normal) alkanes (n-alkanes), branched (methylated) and unsaturated (chains with double bonds) hydrocarbons, isoprenoids, and steranes; (B) acidic fraction with alkanoic acids of normal, branched, unsaturated, and cyclopropyl chains; and (C) polar fraction including n-alkanols, phytol and derivatives, archaeol and sterols.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Compound-specific isotopic composition (δ13C) of the lipid compounds identified in Tirez in analyses carried out in 2021, in the three polarity fractions; (A) apolar, (B) acid, and (C) polar. The isotopic composition of the total biomass (δ13CTOC) is shown in each fraction for comparison.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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