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+--- Thread: New Study About Big Island Lava Caves and Tubes (/showthread.php?tid=22777)
New Study About Big Island Lava Caves and Tubes - HereOnThePrimalEdge - 07-22-2022
Frontiers in Microbiology published a study by scientists and NASA yesterday about the teeming life found within Hawaii Island's lava tubes, lava caves and fumaroles. There's far more life under the Big Island than expected.
From an article about their findings:
They studied samples collected from 70 sites along the Big Island of Hawaii.Some of these areas, particularly those with ongoing geothermal activity, are the most inhospitable places in the world, since they are incredibly hot and filled with chemicals toxic to most living things.
In time, what we learn may be relevant to our understanding of how life began on the Earth or even on Mars, since these environments might be the closest existing analog to what the planets looked like long ago.
https://gizmodo.com/hawaiis-lava-caves-are-teeming-with-bacterial-dark-matt-1849315696
From the published study:
Our data illustrate that lava caves and geothermal sites harbor unique microbial communities, with very little overlap between caves or sites. We also found that older lava tubes (500–800 yrs old) hosted greater phylogenetic diversity (Faith's PD) than sites that were either geothermally active or younger (<400 yrs old).
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2022.934708/full