Abstract: Archaea occupy an important niche in the global carbon cycle and their lipids are widely used as indicators of environmental conditions in both paleoenvironmental and modern biogeochemical studies. The principal sources of archaeal lipids in marine sediments are benthic archaea, fossil remnants of planktonic archaea, and allochthonous sources such as soils. However, the relative contributions of these sources to the sedimentary lipid pool have not been comprehensively constrained, complicating a mechanistic understanding of archaeal lipid proxi...
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