Lots of scientist make researchs about Yellowstone and the effect of the multiple kind of bacteria presents in the hots lakes. Why these bacteria are important ?

Yellowstone national park is composed by a huge superficy of forest witch has 1700 species of trees and by lots species of animals. It is a very important place for the biodiversity. The protection of the differents species is essentiel and we can studie if the influence of the climatic rechauffement have an effect on the population. Moreover we know that the park is very famous for all of their geysers and hot lakes. Since the sixties, scientist knows that bacteria live in these lakes and studie the behavior and the effect of these bacteria. In the same way it can be interesting to know if the green house effect and the global warming change the behavior of these bacteria and destabilize the ecosystem. So why these bacteria are important ?

The hots lake and geysers have the properties to be close to the magma (between 3 and 10km when it is 30km away), that’s why there are very hot, sometimes around 80° and because of the acidity sometimes the pH can be very very small as 1. It difficult to believe that living organism can support the conditions but we discovered that little bacteria live in agreeably. Moreover the studies of these bacteria show that the color of the lake depends of the caracteristics of the bacteria. If a lake is composed by photosynthetic bacteria it going to be green because of the chlorophyll effect or some bacteria have the properties to reflect the orange color. But the temperature, the pression and the pH have also an incidence. For example when the pH is very small, and the lake composed by sulfuric acid (H2SO4), the lake will be more blue than another without H2SO4.All of these elements are at stake on the representation of the lakes. Anyway, somes bacteria living in these conditions, can’t support the « normal » conditions, with a neutral pH and a normal temperature. So we need to know why these bacteria can live in extrem conditions.

Therefore, these bacteria are very important for sciences because of their properties. They can resist to very high temperatures and to very small pH. They can be important in other fields. But we don’t already know if the effect of human being on the planet has an importance for the subsitence of the bacteria. But we can imagine that the global warming is not going to change the properties of the bacteria precisily because of the extrem conditions. Q.E.D.

Carole Destribats,
date de publication : 28 février 2015,
date de dernière mise à jour : 10 mai 2012