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Thermophile

Photo by Dan Doucette
Published on Project Noah
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21.7585, 100.44

Field Notes

Description:

bizarre growth found in hotsprings, temp about 50C (122F),hairlike, moved with the water, I've never seen anything like this.

Habitat:

subtropical valley, hotspring mixing with cold, shallow stream

Notes:

I spotted this during a 4 day trek in southern China near the border with Myanmar. It was just my guide and I on a custom trek. My guide had heard about a hotsprings in the area and I was eager to check it out. He didn't know where they were and we had to keep asking around. They took a while to find and I was really disappointed when we found them. They were much to shallow to bath in and the water was mostly scalding hot. I tried to make a little pool mixing the hot water with the cool water of the stream but I could never get the right mixture. My foot was either cold or burning, sometimes at the same time on different sides of my foot! It was really strange. I thought this growth in the hotspring was really interesting. Not sure if this belongs in the Other category?

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (9)
Dan Doucette
Thanks a lot Chun and Craig. Thanks for the lead Craig. I read a bit about thermophiles, really wild microorganisms! You could have boiled eggs there too and it did have the smell. I smelled it before I saw it!
craigwilliams
Cool! I think I saw pretty much the same thing in the hot springs in Chae Son Nat. Park in Thailand. I found something about them which suggested that they were strings of white thermophile microbacteria. Can't remember where I read it though. It's one tough organism, that's for certain as they said in 17mins you could have the perfect soft boiled egg and the whole place stank of sulphur!
ChunXingWong
Hey those occurs in the natural hotsprings here too. There are even white worms that feeds on these white "things". Green ones also grow inside the drains in my neighborhood.
Dan Doucette
Thanks Leanne, I thought so too. Cool link, thanks auntnance, I would love to check that out. Thanks Laura, at least that's a start. I wasn't sure what to think of this.
LauraMaria
Dan, this is a neat spotting! I'm very certain this is a filamentous bacteria that belongs to a group that are noted for living in quite extreme conditions called the Aquificae. There's a well-known example of this kind of white filamentous microbial mat in some of the hot springs at Yellowstone. The taxonomy of the group is quite messy (as with most microbes) so probably not possible to ID it fully without running some genetic analysis, haha! But very awesome spotting.
auntnance123
If it was flowing with the water, it was most likely an algae of some sort. And since it was a hot spring it would have to be a variety that could tolerate the heat. Here's a different river algae phenomenon: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/lakes-and-rivers/news-short-lived-stunning-spectacle-rainbow-river?image=1
LeanneGardner
Wow! What an interesting spot Dan & a great story to go with it as usual :) It's quite beautiful.

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PublishedJuly 15, 2012

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