Extreme Environments and Their Inhabitants

One example of an environment that is highly toxic to many forms of life is a place called Mono Lake in Mono County, California.  It is listed as one of the oldest lakes in North America and it has no outlet to any other body of water; the only way for water to get out is by evaporation.

This results in increasing concentrations of salt and other minerals, and this lake has incredibly high salinity and alkalinity.  The lake has one main species of endemic brine shrimp that thrives off of plankton that flow into the lake via streams.  Populations of these shrimp are so high that they bring millions of bird individuals to the lake to feed on these aquatic crustaceans.

Also unique to this area is a bacteria, called GFAJ-1, which uses arsenic in its structure instead of phosphorus in small amounts.

This discovery leads scientists to believe that bacteria such as this could have existed around thermal vents around the time of the origin of life.