Mexico ’s Yucatan Peninsula is inarguably most famous for one matter : It was primer coat zero for the asteroid - capped dinosaurian apocalypse 66 million years ago . The entire region , however , is full of unexplored caves andcenotes(sinkholes ) , and a Modern study has let on that some of them are teeming with unconventional life too .
The adventurous team that made the discovery – led by Texas A&M University at Galveston and the United States Geological Survey ( USGS ) – were conduct a comprehensive bionomical study of the Ox Bel Ha cave connection , which is discover run up along the northeastern coast of the peninsula .
They plant that within it there are bacterial colonies that live in low - O piddle and in near - pitch darkness . There is n’t even much organic matter falling from above to feed on . Instead , they live by consuming invisible , dissolved issue primarily comprised of carbon and methane .
They ’re not alone . The squad explicate that these bacterium are the “ keystone ” for the integral submarine ecosystem , and that their unexpended way of getting nutriment has been take on by some of the crustaceans that they endure alongside .
Writing inNature Communications , the international squad of scientist explain that , for example , around 21 percent of the diet of one shrimp metal money is solely methane .
Unlike the inscrutable ocean , where methane ekes upward from hydrothermal vent-hole systems and seafloor bacteria , this internal ear ’s methane forms beneath the hobo camp floor up at the surface . It eventually seep downwards into these flood caves , which at last forms the basis for this outlandish ecosystem .
As food webs go , this is as far from ceremonious as you ’re likely to get .
Methane may seem odd to us oxygen - breathing acres - walkers , but it ’s really avital componentused by life that be in the world ’s oft - undiscovered extreme environments .
It ’s well known that plenty of areas deep within the ocean and concealed beneath Arctic permafrost and immense Antarctic Methedrine sheets contain methanogens , microbic organisms belonging to the archaea domain of life thatproduce methane . The methane - consuming ecosystem within the Ox Bel Ha caves adds a delightful unexampled wrinkle to the write up .
Although this is an beyond a doubt very coolheaded find for evolutionary ecologist , it does highlight a worrying design that ’s being catch across the world ’s ocean at present . Thanks to increased amounts of atomic number 6 dioxide and methane in the worldly concern ’s ocean – something largely drive byclimate change – atomic number 8 levels are drop off .
“ Deoxygenation is a growing concern , ” co - author John Pohlman , a USGS biogeochemist , state in astatement . “ The cognitive process we are look into in these [ cave ] systems are analogous to what is encounter in the global sea . ”
In light , methane ’s great for extremophiles , but the more of it that ooze into the ocean , the less likely a plethora of other lifeforms will survive in the long terminus .
