LECHUGUILLA CAVE Bats of Lechuguilla Update No.12, p.5 Lechuguilla Exploration and Survey Update No.13, p.3 Recent Lechuguilla Exploration No.14, p.3 Recent Lechuguilla Happenings No.15, p.6 OTHER CAVES Slaughter Canyon Cave News No.12, p.1 Oh! See what researchers have found deep in the Earth: The Damage Done No.12, p.5 HB: Understanding the role of microbes in cave formation is the big question. Even the smallest changes in our world can have drastic consequences on these highly adapted populations. They went 400 metres down and seven kilometres into Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Lechuguilla Cave: A Summary Status Report – by Dave Allured.
Push at Lechuguilla or the Lech-A-Gorilla Pushes Back – by Richard A. Bridges and Roy Glaser. ... I’ve done more than 20 expeditions to Lechuguilla Cave. "These bugs have been around billions of years. The pursuit for better antibiotics is almost never ending, yet finding more hero bugs may be the key. But the bacteria samples from the isolated Lechuguilla cave system in New Mexico suggests that drug resistance is actually an ancient trait. Monitoring these bugs over time helps scientists track how we humans are impacting our world. ... bugs” are inevitably resistant to most of the available therapies (1, 5, 6). Lechuguilla Cave Expedition Announcement – by Richard A. Bridges and Roy Glaser. Resistance is hardwired — it’s ancient and bugs have been doing this for a lot longer than we thought. Comments on Lechuguilla Cave, New Mexico – by Donald G. Davis. Caves contain tiny insects that have evolved over thousands of generations to successfully live in the pitch-black cave environment. Resistance diversity in strains isolated from this cave was analyzed by a phenotypic screen against a panel of 26 different antibiotics. It’s possible that bacteria’s drug-resistance genes evolved millions of years ago in organisms like those on Lechuguilla’s cave walls, and are showing up in superbugs now through bacteria’s natural process of gene swapping. influence and Lechuguilla cave offers such environment. BA: What are the big questions remaining for cave microbiology?