What would you carry to regain within a permanently frozen Antarctic lake ? As if the name Lake Enigma was n’t mysterious enough , pivotal scientists have just disclose unique microbial group living their undecomposed lives beneath its glacial surface .
An international team of polar researchers has find microbiota — a residential area of microorganism — living beneath the permanently frozen water ice covert of Antarctica ’s Lake Enigma . Their findings , detail in a December 3 study published in the journalCommunications Earth & Environment , reveal a previously unidentified ecosystem and hint at a lake once thriving with life before it freeze over .
Lake Enigma sits between two glacier , Amorphous and Boulder Clay , in Antarctica ’s Northern Foothills . afford the area ’s average temperature of 6.8 point Fahrenheit ( -14 degree Celsius ) and lows of up to -41.26 point Fahrenheit ( -40.7 degrees Celsius ) , experts intelligibly assumed that Lake Enigma was completely frozen .
The area investigated in the Lake Enigma study.© Communications Earth & Environment (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-024-01842-5
During the summertime of 2019 and 2020 , the squad — including research worker from the Institute of Polar Sciences , National Research Council of Italy ( ISP - CNR)—discovered , to their surprise , that the lake was not fully rooted . Using ground - penetrating radars , they found a stratum of water with a maximal profundity of 39.4 feet ( 12 meters ) about 36 feet ( 11 meters ) below the icy surface .
Consequently , the squad bore through the ice to collect sample distribution with a technique that foreclose the water from getting foul . Back at the lab , the researchers found something surprising in the sample distribution : life .
They identified microorganism , including bacteria such asPseudomonadota , Actinobacteriota , andBacteroidota , and also the “ presence , and sometimes even dominance , of ultrasmall bacteria belong to to the superphylumPatescibacteria , ” the researchers wrote in the study . SuperphylumPatescibacteriais an extremely simple bacterium with limited functions .
“ jointly , these features reveal a new complexness in Antarctic lake food webs , ” the research worker wrote .
According to these results , the team suggests that the lake may have once hosted a thriving and various community of micro-organism before freeze over . Though it is unclear when Lake Enigma froze , the intact continent of Antarctica was cover in frosting by about14 million years ago , suggest that Lake Enigma would have freeze by that time as well . Once the ice set in , some of the microorganisms must have survived , mean that the bacterium the researchers identify in their labs might be the descendants of this original ancient residential district . After explicate in closing off for perhaps millions of years , however , they are in all probability different from their root .
Antarctica is classify as adesert ; despite its fatheaded ice shroud , it has very low precipitation . As a effect , the researchers also intimate that , since the lake has n’t dry out out yet , it likely has an undiscovered root of water — plausibly the nearby Amorphous Glacier . However , Lake Enigma is still “ isolated from the outside environment by a permanent ice back ” and features a “ chemically stratified piddle column , ” according to the study . In other words , its closing off and static stratification indicate that theglacier ’s possible drainage has n’t infix any substantial external contamination .
Ultimately , the uncovering of microorganisms in such utmost environments shake off ignitor on current Antarctic life forms invisible to the naked eye , and hints to the ancient ecosystems that thrived on the frozen continent zillion of years ago .
Related article : Evidence of Life Found in Lake Deep Beneath Antarctic Ice
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