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Archaea

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Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior
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Definition

Archaebacteria are group of microorganisms that are anaerobic autotrophs, come under a separate domain, and live under extremely hostile condition.

Introduction

Archea have inhabited Earth for nearly 4 billion of its 4.6 billion years in existence, making them possibly the oldest living life form (Schopf 1983). Early time the earth is thought to have very less oxygen, but ample carbon dioxide. Earlier the bacteria and archaea did not require oxygen, but utilize carbon dioxide. In two billion years, they have covered the ocean floors, forming strong, collective mats. However, around 2.4 billion years ago global oxygen levels increased that may be due to release of oxygen from the Earth’s crust (Rowland 2010). Like eukarya and bacteria the archaea is also diverse in nature both morphologically and physiologically. Morphologically they may be rod shaped, spherical, cuboidal, spiral, plate shaped, and irregular. Some are single celled and some are filamentous or aggregates....

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Correspondence to Suman Yadav .

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Yadav, S. (2019). Archaea. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_821-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_821-1

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