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Hawaii’s volcanic environment contains New research this week has uncovered a large collection of mysterious microbes. Scientists say lava caves on islands and other structures created by volcanic activity have unique, diverse, and still-living bacterial communities within them. The findings suggest that much remains to be learned about life in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth.
Researchers at several universities and NASA collaborated on this research, namely published Thursday at the Frontier in Microbiology. They studied samples collected from 70 sites along the Big Island of Hawaii, the largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago. These sites include caves, tubes, and fumaroleThese are openings or openings through which water and volcanic gases can seep out. They analyzed and sequenced the RNA present in the sample, enabling the creation of a rough map of the bacterial community living there.
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Some of these areas, especially those with constant geothermal activity, are some of the most extreme places on earth, as they are extremely hot and filled with chemicals that are toxic to most living things. So the research team hopes to find relatively little diversity of life within sites subjected to these harsh conditions. The researchers found that ancient caves and tubes formed more than 500 years ago had a greater diversity of bacteria. But to their surprise, even active geothermal vents were teeming with bacteria. Compared to other sites, the bacterial communities in these harsher habitats appear more complex in how they interact with one another.
“This brings us to the question, Do extreme environments help create more interactive microbial communities, where microorganisms are more dependent on one another?” Study author Rebecca Prescott, a researcher at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the University of Hawaii, said in a statement. “And if so, what about the harsh environment that helped create this?
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The bacteria at these sites rarely overlap, meaning that these environments appear to host their own unique microbial world, with at least thousands of unknown species left to identify. One group of bacteria in particular, known as the Chloroflexi, may be particularly impressive, although they are commonly found in various volcanic areas and appear to interact with many other organisms. They can be an example of a “central species” – microbes essential to the structure and function of their communities.
“This study suggests the possibility that ancient bacterial strains, such as the phylum Chloroflexi, may have had ‘an important ecological function or role,'” Prescott said. “Chloroflexi are a very diverse group of bacteria, with many different roles in many different environments, but they are not well studied so we don’t know what they do in this society. Some scientists call this group “microbial dark matter” – microorganisms that are invisible or unstudied in nature. “
This type of genetic sampling study can provide a broad view of the world of bacteria present in a given location, but not more detailed information about individual species or the role they play in their microbiome. So scientists say more research is needed to decipher this volcanic population. Over time, what we learn may be very relevant to our understanding of how life began on Earth or even on Mars, as these environments may be the closest extant counterparts to what planets looked like in the past.
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