A new species of bacteria that functions like electrical wiring has recently been discovered on a brackish beach in Oregon. The species was named Candidatus Electrothrix yaqonensis in honor of the Yaquina tribe of Native Americans that once lived in and around Yaquina Bay, where the bacteria were found.

This species is a type of cable bacteria: rod-shaped microbes that are connected at both ends to one another to create a chain and which share an outer membrane, forming filaments several centimeters long. Cable bacteria are found in marine and freshwater sediments and, unusually among bacteria, are electrically conductive. This is due to their special metabolism, in which electrons generated by oxidizing sulfides in their deeper layers are sent to their surface layer, where they are received by oxygen and nitric acid.