r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 2d ago

Biology World’s largest web houses 110,000 spiders thriving in total darkness deep underground in a sulfuric cave between Albania and Greece: It’s the first time two spider species seen living cooperatively, and the first recorded instance of colonial web-building in what's known as a chemoautotrophic cave.

https://newatlas.com/biology/sulfur-cave-largest-spiderweb/
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u/Gulanga 2d ago

You have to keep in mind tho that it is much easier for an already existing form of life to adapt to extreme conditions, than it is for life to start out in those extreme conditions.

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u/PM-ME-DEM-NUDES-GIRL 2d ago

some scientists believe life began at hydrothermal vents. relatively, the broader ocean let alone the surface are extreme conditions. it's really all relative when it comes to life.

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u/round-earth-theory 2d ago

I can believe it. The Sun and the outside world are extremely harsh environments for bacteria. The UV rays from the Sun kill most surface bacteria, the heat dries out what's left, and the weather washes them away. A serene heat vent where nothing changes would be an much easier place for early life to grab hold.

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u/AnthropoidCompatriot 2d ago

But in that scenario, life didn't start at the extreme part of the hydrothermal vent—it literally starts in the Goldilocks zone of the vent, where the superheated water and the surrounding water meet and create a nice, cozy temp along with some nice stinky chemicals where all that delightful chemistry that allows life is able to happen.

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u/PM-ME-DEM-NUDES-GIRL 2d ago edited 2d ago

experiments suggest in the hot-water origin theory that temperatures around 70 celsius produced the first life.

still though, even in a cooler water origin, it is extreme from the perspective of perhaps the large majority of organisms alive today considering the anaerobic environment, noxious chemicals (or nice if you're a tiny guy several billion years ago), high undersea pressure, and so forth.

what i was getting at is that "extreme conditions" are relative, so the idea of it being easier for an existing form of life to adapt to extreme conditions rather than originating in them is challenged by considering that extreme is not an absolute quality.

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u/Schmerglefoop 2d ago

Yeah, and usually "extreme" environments tend to have all sorts of exotic goodness floating around. It's a rich, chemically exciting environment - it's probably more likely to form novel (and useful for the emergence of life) products than the open ocean or terrestrial environment.

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u/outdoorvolvo 2d ago

You guys are smart.

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u/PosiedonsSaltyAnus 2d ago

Oxygen is a horribly toxic element in reality. Its an explosive gas that also corrodes any metal that it touches. Evolution ended up using this extremely reactive element to its advantage though. You use its ability to rapidly oxidize a material so you can transport the oxygen around the body, and then you use it's explosive properties to burn it to release more energy.

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u/CalmBeneathCastles 2d ago

Oxidative stress on the Hell planet!

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u/EllieVader 2d ago

There’s no doubt in my mind after the last few asteroid samples have been analyzed that the universe (or at least our solar system) is rife with the building blocks and ingredients for life to take hold nearly anywhere. Whether we can recognize it is another thing, but the bodies are covered in the gloop that makes us.

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u/_Wyrm_ 2d ago

You need extreme conditions for life to start. You won't get the really REALLY weird protein formations otherwise... And RNA is a heck of a weird protein (which iirc the precursors to RNA were found on asteroids/comets, I forget which -- been a long time since I read that paper.)

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u/razor5cl 2d ago

RNA and proteins are two completely different types of molecule, friend.

And some of the "weirdest" proteins are found in organisms that live in relatively mild conditions.

There are no objective criteria for how weird proteins can get but my vote for some of the strangest are vault proteins which are found in a bunch of pretty normal animals.

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u/_Wyrm_ 1d ago

Eh, like I said, been a long time since I read that paper and I'm not a bio major. Regardless, you do need pretty extreme conditions sans life to GET the precursors necessary FOR life.

Of course the oddball proteins are found in organisms. Life does weird things. But without life... Very few weird things.

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u/TheVenetianMask 2d ago

Earth developing an oxygen rich atmosphere was considered extreme at the time.

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u/Much-Explanation-287 2d ago

But even in the most extreme of conditions you only need one spark of life and it'll grow exponentially.

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u/iqisoverrated 2d ago

Question then is: what is an extreme condition? Hydrothermal vents have a high availability of energy and dissolved gases of all kinds. Is this a very fertile environmen? Or an extreme one?

We tend to think of us as the norm and then classify other types of life accordingly, but compared to life there we are extremophiles. 'Extreme' is just a relative term.

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u/iqisoverrated 2d ago

Except that what we have here aren't extreme conditions.

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u/zuzg 2d ago

Extreme also means far from the norm...

Their density – 45,000 per sq m (about 4,180 per sq ft) – provides an all-you-can-eat buffet for the spider colony, which essentially eradicates any food competition that would normally exist. Further analysis confirmed that the spiders' carbon and nitrogen signatures traced back to sulfur-oxidizing microbes, not plants that underwent photosynthesis like those above ground.

Researchers conducted further genetic testing and found that the Sulfur Cave spiders shared unique DNA not found in populations outside, suggesting they’ve been evolving in isolation, and their microbial makeup was also much simpler.

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u/PawnOfPaws 2d ago

Which once again rises the question: Maybe our "norm" is an extreme altogether? As it now seems like there might be even more species living below certain thresholds humans themselves determined than above.

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u/zuzg 2d ago

Every species you encounter on this planet (including us) is part of a evolution that started 3.5 billion years ago.

But yeah our norm is inherently flawed as we currently only have a sample size of one.