Almost all the oxygen in the atmosphere today was produced by cyanobacteria 3,000 million years ago; cyanobacteria continue to produce between 20% and 30% of the photosynthetic activity on Earth. Furthermore, they perform additional vital tasks: along with other microorganisms called Archaea, they are the only living beings able to convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into chemical forms which can be used by any life form. According to one of the authors of the research, Saúl Ares of Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC; Interdisciplinary Complex Systems Group) at UC3M. "Without cyanobacteria, neither human beings nor any other complex living organisms could survive on Earth, because we would not have oxygen to breathe or nitrogen with which to build complex molecules like DNA and the proteins in our bodies".

Larvae of the newly identified fly species Pseudogaurax paratolmos Wheeler grow up on a gory diet—the larvae of the fungus-growing ant Apterostigma dentigerum. The species is formally described by Cely González and co-authors working with Hermógenez Fernández-Marín, Smithsonian research associate and scientist at the Institute for Scientific Investigations and High-End Technology Services (INDICASAT-AIP). PhD student González discovered the new species in a larger survey of Apterostigma ant parasites.