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Even a single bacterial cell can sense the seasons changing

Though they live only a few hours before dividing, bacteria can anticipate the approach of cold weather and prepare for it. The discovery suggests that seasonal tracking is fundamental to life.

“It seemed like a very nonsensical idea to think that bacteria would care about something that’s happening on a scale that’s so much bigger than their lifetime,” said Luísa Jabbur, a microbial chronobiologist at the John Innes Center in Norwich, England, and lead author of the new paper. The chronobiologist Luísa Jabbur, here standing in front of a pond at the John Innes Center, discovered that even simple cyanobacteria can anticipate the approach of winter and cold weather by tracking day length. It is humbling to think that something so ancient and small may contain the seeds of the complex seasonal anticipation behaviors we see today, from the migration of shorebirds and songbirds, to hibernating grizzly bears, to the human craving for pumpkin spice lattes.

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