Aerobiology
Aerobiology studies biological particles and organisms carried through the air, including how they move, survive, and affect living things.
Bioaerosol: An airborne particle of biological origin, such as pollen, a fungal spore, a bacterium, or a virus-bearing particle. Bioaerosols are the airborne units whose dispersal and persistence aerobiology examines.
Pollen forecast: An estimate of airborne pollen levels for a place and time, used to anticipate exposure. Aerobiological sampling and weather data help predict when pollen exposure will rise.
Pollen: Microscopic grains produced by seed plants that carry male gametophytes. Pollen grains are prominent biological particles monitored in air for ecology and allergy studies.
Charles Harrison Blackley: A nineteenth-century English physician whose experiments linked airborne grass pollen to hay fever. Blackley used pollen exposure and air sampling to establish a medical basis for aerobiological research.
Microbial loop: A pathway in aquatic food webs through which dissolved organic matter is recycled by microbes and returned to higher trophic levels. Unlike aquatic microbial ecology, aerobiology still has limited knowledge of how airborne microbes contribute to ecosystem processes.
Aerosol: A suspension of solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas. Biological particles follow the same atmospheric transport processes as nonbiological aerosols.
Aeromicrobiology: The study of microorganisms present in air and their sources, survival, transport, and effects. This subfield focuses aerobiological methods on airborne microorganisms.
Fungal spore: A reproductive or dispersal cell produced by a fungus. Many fungi release spores that travel through air and can be sampled as bioaerosols.
Hay fever: Seasonal allergic rhinitis, commonly triggered by airborne pollen. The search for the cause of hay fever helped drive systematic study of airborne pollen.
Long-range transport of microorganisms: The movement of microorganisms over large distances through atmospheric circulation. Its scale and ecological consequences remain difficult to measure and predict.