September 4th 2023.
This weekend, the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock City, Nevada made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Floods turned the dry lakebed, known as Black Rock Playa, to mud and stranded 70,000 attendees. Festival organisers urged people to 'conserve food, water, and fuel’ and to ‘shelter in a warm, safe space.’
As it turns out, the floods had an unexpected consequence - they woke up a variety of extremophiles that can lie dormant in the dried-out lake bed for decades. One of these creatures are Triops and fairy shrimp, small crustaceans that can survive extreme environmental conditions like drought.
These creatures have two eyes and a pit organ, a third eye common among insects. The pit organ helps Triops detect changes in light, allowing them to see predators coming. They lay their eggs in the sediment when the water dries up. These eggs are covered in a hard shell that protects them from the elements and can remain dormant for decades. They can survive extreme temperatures, high salinity, and lack of oxygen.
That's why they are sometimes called ‘dinosaur shrimp’. Triops are related to the oldest living creature, Triops cancriformis. When it rains, the eggs hatch and the shrimp emerge to live in the newly formed water. They live for a few weeks or months, depending on the species, and then they die when the water dries up.
However, while the festival is officially over, it's just beginning for the Triops and fairy shrimp. These creatures will start making eggs of their own in just over a week. Unfortunately, they'll need to do it before the weather turns, as any crustaceans caught wandering the sediment when it dries won't fare as well as their eggs.
So, not only will the people at Burning Man have to deal with mud and chaos, when the Playa at Black Rock gets wet, these fairy shrimp will hatch. It's a reminder that even in the most difficult of times, nature finds a way.
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