A tiny worm discovered in the Great Salt Lake could help scientists better understand the origins and resilience of life in extreme environments. Its story remains largely a mystery.
The Great Salt Lake is famous for brine shrimp, brine flies, and water so salty that few animals can survive in it. Now scientists have added a far stranger resident to that short list: a tiny worm that appears to live nowhere else on Earth.
Researchers at the University of Utah have formally described a new free-living nematode found in the lake’s microbialites, the reeflike mineral mounds that cover parts of the lakebed. The species, named Diplolaimelloides woaabi, measures less than 1.5 millimeters long (0.06 inches), but it could offer important clues about life in one of North America’s most extreme aquatic environments.
The name honors the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, whose ancestral lands include the lake. Michael Werner, an assistant professor of biology who led the research team, consulted tribal elders, who recommended Wo’aabi, an Indigenous word meaning “worm.”
A Tiny Animal Hidden in a Harsh Lake
Nematodes are among the most abundant animals on Earth. They live in soil, polar ice, deep ocean vents, and many other environments, and more than 250,000 species are known. Yet until 2022, none had been confirmed in the Great Salt Lake.
That changed when Julie Jung, then a postdoctoral researcher in Werner’s lab, found nematodes during sampling trips by kayak and bicycle. The worms were living in microbialites, hardened structures built by microbial communities that help support the lake’s food web.
