The newest kingdom of life is the Archaea Kingdom which is composed of single celled microorganisms called archaea or extremophyles. The archaea were initially classified as bacteria and later archaebacteris, but these classification are outdated because the archaea have unique properties separating them from both the other single cell (prokaryote) life forms as well as the multi celled (eukaryote) life forms.

The word Archaea comes from the ancient Greek word meaning ancient things as the first representative discovered were methanogens, (organisms that produce methane) and it was assumed that their metabolism reflected the primitive atmosphere of Earth and that these microbes were around from antiquity. Soon, new habitats were studied and additional organisms were discovered, which included the halophilic (salt loving) microbes, the hyperthermophilic (extreme heat loving) microbes.

The classification of archaea into species is also controversial. Biology defines a species as a group of related organisms. The familiar exclusive breeding criterion for species is that these organisms can breed with each other but not with other species. This definition is of no help since the archaea only reproduce asexually, that is without having sex or sexual organs.

Furthrmore, classification remains difficult because the majority of these microbes have not been thoroughly studied in laboratories as yet. However, there are two super-phylum groups that have emerged from the current studies, which are 1. Euryarchaeida and 2. Proteoarchaeota. From these two groups, several phylum divisions of each super-phylum that are being explored. Methinks that it is too soon to begin listing all these divisions because the classification of the Kingdom of Archaea is still in the formative stages.

So, for now, I will just include my photographs of these remarkable creatures.

Living in the spring itself are different species of the archaea, those that have the color of green and yellow. What is most amazing, from what I understand about the archaea, is that each color is a different species adapted to a certain level of water temperature.

The blue color in the middle of the pool is not life forms but is the color of the water which is due to sunlight being scattered by the fine particles suspended in the water.

When I first saw Grand Prismatic, my immediate thought was that the colors in the spring and the several outflow streams were minerals deposited by the hot spring water.

However, far from minerals, these colorful mats contain millions of microorganisms, living animals which have only recently been discovered and which animals make up a life Kingdom called the Archaea.

Prior to 1977, the archaea were included in the Monera Kingdom with bacteria. However, in 1977, methinks because the archaea uses photosynthesis to produce food and bacteria does not, the Monera Kingdom was divided into the Archaea Kingdom and the Bacteria Kingdom. Thus, these amazing life forms were put into their own Life Kingdom.

Archaea were initially viewed as extremophiles living in harsh environments such as in hot springs and salt lakes, but additional species have been found in a broad range of habitats including soil, oceans, marsh lands and the human body.

The colorful orange and brown mats which line the runoff channels of many hot springs are built by billions of thread-like filament and worm-shaped cell of the thermophilic cyanobacteria: Calothrix, Phormidium, and Synechococcus.

These microbes in the thick mats live in communities similar to a forest. The mats have a vertical structure with the microbes living near the surface (the top of the mat, similar to a forest canopy) using sunlight to perform photosynthesis to provide food for the community.

Microbes living deeper in the mat (similar to a forest under story) derive energy from chemicals produced by surface microbes. These under story microbes perform other vital functions such as decomposition and then recycle the nutrients upward to those microbes in the canopy.

All of these organisms create an ecosystem in the thickness of only a couple inches.