New member Jude Coleman (@JudeLB_Coleman) writes for National Geographic about the life-teeming slopes of Mount Everest. Coleman talks to a scientific team that recently spent time on the mountain to take environmental readings and catalog its life via DNA they collected from pools of water. Their survey found a whopping 16% of all known taxonomic orders of life on just the southern flank of the mountain’s high-alpine zone and above. The team’s mission was to make a baseline reading of the surprising amount of life on the upper reaches of the peak before it dwindles as a result of climate change and human intrusion. Photo by Zippy Monkey via Wikimedia Commons
