Three truths
- Timed
- Branched off about 3.0 billion years ago · the last 71% of life's story
- Named
- ≈300 named living species · 0.02% of all named
- Weighed
- Part of Archaea (≈7 Gt C), not measured separately.
Archaea · class
Halophilic archaea
Halobacteria
Living · roughly 300 described species
Salt-loving archaea that thrive in brines many times saltier than seawater. Their pigments can turn salt ponds pink or red.
They thrive in water many times saltier than the sea and can turn salt lakes pink.
Key characteristics
- Need very high salt to survive
- Some capture light with a pigment called bacteriorhodopsin
- Colour salt flats and evaporation ponds
- Habitat
- Salt lakes and salt evaporation ponds
- Branched off
- About 3.0 billion years ago (approximate)
- Parent lineage
- Euryarchaeota
Classification
Sources
- Haloarchaea (Wikipedia) · Wikipedia
- TimeTree: the timescale of life · TimeTree
- Open Tree of Life · Open Tree of Life
- Tree of Life Web Project · Tree of Life Web Project