ABOVE: Pei-Yin Shih, Elizabeth Goetz, and Ryoji Shinya on a nematode collecting trip to Mono Lake
JAMES LEE
Mono Lake in California is a salty, alkaline, arsenic-rich body of water known to be home to just two eukaryotes: brine shrimp and alkali flies. In a study published today (September 26) in Current Biology, researchers found eight more species residing in the lake and its sediments—all hardy, tiny nematodes. Culturing one species from the group Auanema in the lab revealed that the animals are capable of surviving 500 times the dose of arsenic that would kill a person.
“Mono Lake is famous for being a limited ecosystem in terms of animals . . . so it’s really cool that they’ve managed to demonstrate that there are a bunch of nematode species living in there, as well as the shrimp and the flies. It expands the whole ecosystem considerably,” says Lucy Stewart, a ...
