There’s Unexpected Life In This Frozen Antarctic Lake That Can Get As Low As -41 Degrees
Located between the Amorphous and Boulder Clay glaciers in Antarctica is Lake Enigma, a body of water that regularly experiences temperatures around seven degrees Fahrenheit. During the winter, it can get as low as -41 degrees.
For a long time, experts have believed that the remote lake was completely frozen and unsuitable for life, as it formed during a period with a warmer climate. But new evidence has shown that some microbiotic life can survive even in such inhospitable conditions.
The National Research Council of Italy’s Institute of Polar Sciences led a team of researchers in their study. They identified several types of microbiota during the “XXXV Italian Expedition to Antarctica,” which took place between November 2019 and January 2020.
They used ground-penetrating radar to detect the presence of liquid water deep below the lake’s frozen surface.
The water was below ice caps that ranged between about 11 and 36 feet deep. The water was at least 39 feet deep.
The researchers then employed a custom-made thermal melt head drilling system to obtain water samples from the lake without contaminating them. Afterward, they brought the samples back to the laboratory for testing.
According to the study, the lab tests confirmed a total of 21 bacterial and eukaryotic phyla in the surface ice of Lake Enigma, along with layers of stratified water columns and microbial mats.
Some examples of the microbiota they found included Pseudomonadota, Actinobacteriota, and Bacteroidota.
The most surprising discovery was of Patescibacteria. Such bacteria are extremely simple—they feature a small genome and small cells that can only perform a certain number of processes and metabolic functions.
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“As a consequence, these bacteria have adopted an obligate symbiotic or predatory lifestyle, relying entirely on their respective prokaryotic host cells,” wrote the authors of the study.
The research team theorized that the lake was once filled with living organisms before it formed a permanently frozen top layer around 14 million years ago.
The species alive today are most likely the descendants of those who lived in an ancient thriving ecosystem and managed to survive somehow.
“The ice-sealed planktonic and benthic microbiota of Lake Enigma likely represent persistent legacy biota that arose from the lake’s ancient microbial ecosystem before the freeze-up,” concluded the researchers.
“Overall, Lake Enigma microbiota occupy different trophic levels within a simple aquatic food web, ranging from primary production to ectosymbiosis and predation. The ultrasmall Patescibacteria, in particular, may play unusual roles in the lake’s ecosystem that do not play out in other ice-covered Antarctic lakes.”
The lake should have dried up in the hot, dry, desert-like conditions long ago, but since it hasn’t, this indicates it has a water source that is unknown to scientists.
The details of the latest findings were published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
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