While working in an office as a data technician this past winter, I unexpectedly received an invitation to join an 8-day long expedition into Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico. While all caves are unique and harbor interesting research opportunities, Lechuguilla stands out among the rest. A 140+ mile long system, the cave is well-known for its incredible formations and beauty. However, something else lives in Lechuguilla, unseen to the naked eye.
New research was recently published in Nature Communications by Pawlowski et al. documenting the discovery of a new bacterium found in Lechuguilla. The bacterium Paenibacillus was found to be resistant to many common antibiotics, even though the bacterial communities of Lechuguilla have been isolated from the surface for at least 4 million years. Though the bacteria found in Lechuguilla is non-pathogenic and does not pose a threat to humans, it provides an opportunity to study how antibiotic resistance develops.
I could not turn down the chance to spend eight days surveying and inventorying Lechuguilla. With only a week’s notice, I committed to the trip and started gathering and packing equipment with excitement.
As a newcomer to Lechuguilla, I was told, first and foremost, that the heat is the most difficult challenge of caving there. The cave is around 68 F and 98% humidity, which is akin to moving through a warm bathtub. When exercising at this temperature, cavers break out in a sweat in only a few minutes, and it is easy to become dehydrated. This temperature must create an ideal environment for bacterial growth, especially compared with the colder caves of Montana.
Once at camp, 3-4 hours’ travel from the surface, I learned that great pains are taken to protect the cave from us humans. Our 10-person crew ate and slept on tarps, which collected hair, skin, or any other leavings that we shed into the cave. We covered our coughs and sneezes to prevent spraying our own bacteria around, and of course, we bagged up our own waste to carry out with us at the end of the trip.
Even collecting water for our daily needs was a delicate system. We scooped water with a designated pitcher, never allowing any part of our body to touch the water, and ensuring the lip of the pitcher did not touch our personal water containers as we poured. According to microbiologist Hazel Barton, the native bacteria are in extreme competition with each other due to the limited nutrients available in the cave, so the inadvertent introduction of bacteria from outside should be prevented wherever possible.
The expedition I joined was focused on cartographic survey and inventory, so we were not collecting any new bacteria. However, we discovered virgin passage with new lakes and formations never seen before by human eyes.
These discoveries were extraordinary on their own–at once the most grand and beautiful underground landscape I had ever seen. But I also wondered as I looked into the pools, which are so clear and still that at times they are invisible, what else might lurk there. Perhaps a new antibiotic; the next Penicillin.
I was freshly instilled with the sense of our responsibility to protect Lechuguilla and places like it. We should preserve not only its beauty, but the wealth of research that remains to be done.
