Ben Peterson's recent paper, published in the journal Environmental Microbiology, provides new critical information on the microbial communities responsible for mercury methylation in the Florida Everglades. A couple take away points from this study: the amount of sulfate in the wetland negatively relates to the abundance of microbial communities with the genes for mercury methylation (hgcAB gene pair), the formation of methylmercury is controlled by both the availability of inorganic mercury and the methylating capacity of the microbial community, and (3) sulfate-reducing bacteria in the Everglades do not have the hgcAB gene pair. The results provide a more complete understanding of factors controlling mercury fate in wetland environments.  (link to article).