Hawaii ’s volcanic environments control a rich raiment of mysterious microbes , new research this workweek has regain . Scientists say that the islands ’ lava caves and other structures created by volcanic activity have singular , divers , and still uncharacterized community of bacteria live inside them . The findings indicate that there is much left to see about life in some of the most utmost conditions on Earth .
researcher at several university and NASA collaborated for the bailiwick , which waspublishedThursday in Frontiers in Microbiology . They studied sample collected from 70 sites along the Big Island of Hawaii , the with child island of the Hawaiian archipelago . These sites included caves , tubes , andfumaroles , which are openings or venthole where volcanic gas and water can escape . They canvass and sequenced the RNA found in the sample distribution , allowing them to produce a rough map of the bacterial communities living there .
Some of these areas , particularly those with ongoing geothermic activity , are the most inhospitable places in the world , since they are incredibly red-hot and filled with chemicals toxic to most surviving things . So the research team expect to find comparatively little variety of life nestled within the sites that had these utmost precondition . Older cave and tube that were make over 500 years ago , the research worker found , did have great bacterial diversity . But to their surprise , even the dynamic geothermal vent were filled with a wide variety of bacteria . And compare to the other website , the bacterial residential district in these harsher habitats also appeared to be more complex in how they interacted with one another .
The Thurston Lava Tube in Hawaii Volcano National Park, Big IslandPhoto: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)
“ This leads to the question , do utmost environments help make more interactive microbial communities , with microorganism more strung-out on each other ? ” say discipline author Rebecca Prescott , a investigator at the NASA Johnson Space Center and University of Hawaii , in astatement . “And if so , what is it about extreme environments that helps to make this ?
The bacteria found in these internet site also rarely overlap , meaning that these environs seem to host their own unique microbial worlds , with at least 1000 of obscure species left to be identified . One group of bacteria in particular , know as Chloroflexi , might be particularly influential , though , since they were commonly found in different volcanic areas and seemed to interact with many other organisms . And it ’s potential that they may be an model of a “ hub species”—microbes vital to the social organization and subroutine of their communities .
“ This study points to the possibility that more ancient blood of bacteria , like the phylum Chloroflexi , may have crucial ecological ‘ jobs , ’ or use , ” enunciate Prescott . “ The Chloroflexi are an highly diverse group of bacterium , with lots of different roles found in lots of different surround , but they are not well canvas and so we do n’t know what they do in these communities . Some scientists call such group ‘ microbic night matter’—the unseen or un - studied microorganisms in nature . ”
A stalactite formation in a Hawaiian cave system from this study with copper minerals and white microbial colonies.Photo: Kenneth Ingham
These sorts of genetic sampling studies can supply a wide view of the bacterial world found in a particular stead , but not more elaborate information about individual metal money or the roles they run in their tiny neighborhoods . So the scientists say that more inquiry is want to decrypt the mystery of these volcanic habitant . In time , what we learn may be relevant to our understanding of how life begin on the Earth or even on Mars , since these surround might be the near existing analog to what the satellite look like long ago .
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Thick microbial mats hang under a rock ledge in steam vents that run along the Eastern Rift Zone.Image: Jimmy Saw
