All Thermophilic Archaea

Thermophilic Archaea is a Browse By group of the Nature Atlas that gathers species of archaea that grow best at high temperatures, in hot springs, hydrothermal vents and other places too hot for most life, such as Nanoarchaeum equitans, the smallest known archaeon, found at a hydrothermal vent off Iceland, which grows near the boiling point of water and depends on contact with its host, the archaeon Ignicoccus, to survive. An entry belongs here when its own cited article describes an archaeon that grows at a high temperature. It excludes the bacteria, which belong to a different domain of life and have groups of their own. The group lets a reader compare the heat-loving microbes that live at the edge of what life can endure.