Hawaii contains volcanic environments A rich array of mysterious microbes, new research found this week. Scientists say there are unique, diverse and still uncharacterized communities of bacteria living inside lava caves and other structures created by volcanic activity on the islands. The findings show that much remains to be learned about life in the most extreme conditions on Earth.
Several universities and NASA researchers collaborated for the study has been published Thursday Frontiers in Microbiology. They studied samples collected from 70 sites across the Big Island of Hawaii, the largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago. These places include caves, pipes and fumaroles, are openings or vents through which volcanic gases and water can escape. They analyzed and sequenced the RNA found in the samples, which allowed them to create a rough map of the bacterial communities that lived there.
Some of these areas, especially those with ongoing geothermal activity, are some of the most inhospitable places in the world because they are incredibly hot and full of chemicals that are toxic to most living things. Thus, the research team expected to find relatively few species of life in areas with these extreme conditions. Researchers have found that older caves and pipes dating back more than 500 years have a greater diversity of bacteria. But to their surprise, even active geothermal vents were full of different bacteria. And compared to the other sites, the bacterial communities in these harsher habitats also appeared to be more complex in their interactions with each other.
“This raises the question, do extreme environments help create more interactive microbial communities where microorganisms are more interdependent?” Rebecca Prescott, a researcher at the NASA Johnson Space Center and the University of Hawaii, is the author of the study. statement. “If so, what is it about extreme environments that help create this?
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The bacteria found at these sites also rarely overlap, meaning these environments host their own unique microbial worlds, and at least thousands of unknown species remain to be identified. A group of bacteria known as Chloroflexi in particular can be particularly effective because they are commonly found in various volcanic areas and interact with many other organisms. And perhaps they may be examples of “hub species,” microbes vital to the structure and function of communities.
“This study points to the possibility that older bacterial lineages, such as the Chloroflexi phylum, may have important ecological ‘jobs’ or roles,” Prescott said. “Chloroflexi is a very diverse group of bacteria with many different roles in many different environments, but they are not well studied and so we don’t know what they do in these communities. Some scientists call such groups microbial dark matter – invisible or unstudied microorganisms in nature.
Such genetic sampling studies can provide a broad view of the bacterial world found in a given location, but do not provide more detailed information about individual species or the roles they play in their small neighborhoods. Thus, scientists say that more research is needed to unravel the mystery of these volcanic inhabitants. In time, what we learn may be relevant to our understanding of how life began on Earth or even Mars, as these environments may be the closest available analogues to what the planets looked like long ago.
