Lifeboat Foundation

Berkeley scientists have discovered a new choanoflagellate species in Mono Lake that forms multicellular colonies and hosts a microbiome, offering new perspectives on the evolution of multicellular organisms.

The salty, arsenic-and cyanide-laced waters of the Eastern Sierra Nevada’s Mono Lake is an extremely hostile environment. Aside from the abundant brine shrimp and black clouds of alkali flies, very few organisms live there.

Now, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have discovered a new creature lurking in the lake’s briny shallows — one that could tell scientists about the origin of animals more than 650 million years ago.