From the deepest seafloor to the highest mountain, from the hottest region to the cold Antarctic plateau, environments labeled as extreme are numerous on Earth and they present a wide variety of features and characteristics. The life processes occurring within these environments are equally diverse, not only depending on stress factors (e.g. temperature, pressure, pH and chemicals) but also on the type of life forms, ranging from microbes to higher species. How is life limited by and adapted to extreme external biotic and abiotic factors? This key question summarises the deliberations...

The interdisciplinary field of Astrobiology constitutes a joint arena where provocative discoveries are coalescing concerning, e.g. the prevalence of exoplanets, the diversity and hardiness of life, and its increasingly likely chances for its emergence. Biologists, astrophysicists, biochemists, geoscientists and space scientists share this exciting mission of revealing the origin and commonality of life in the Universe. The members of the different disciplines are used to their own terminology and technical language. In the interdisciplinary environment many terms either have redundant...