Hundreds of never-before-seen life-forms live in this 6,000-foot-deep volcano's acid jets - Livescience.com

These extreme microbes like it hot… really hot.

On Earth, some organisms like it hot, some like it cold, and others feel at home only among the scalding acid jets of an undersea volcano.

Now, researchers exploring a deep-sea volcano near New Zealand have inducted almost 300 new extreme-living microbes into that bizarre club.

In a subsequent DNA analysis of the volcanic sediment, the team identified 285 different types of novel microbes previously unknown to science.

The new extremophile haul includes 202 potential new species of bacteria and 83 species of archaea (ancient single-celled microbes that tend to live in extreme environments).

Similar to the diverse cast of microbes living in Grand Prismatic Spring, different types of microbes seemed to congregate at different parts of Brothers Volcano, depending on the temperature and acidity of the surrounding water, the team found.

Because certain microbes sharing certain genetic traits seemed to thrive in specific conditions in Brothers Volcano, it follows that researchers could infer a lot about an extreme habitat's conditions merely by studying the microbes that live there. .