Scientists Discover New Species in the Great Salt Lake

In the hypersaline waters of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, scientists have discovered a creature so small it escaped notice for decades—and it turns out to be entirely new to science.

The microscopic roundworm, now named Diplolaimelloides woaabi, likely lives nowhere else on Earth. Researchers at the University of Utah chose the species name in consultation with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, whose ancestral lands include the lake; wo’aabi means “worm” in the Indigenous tribe’s language. The find is remarkable for what it reveals about life in one of North America’s most extreme and imperiled ecosystems.

Nematodes are among the most abundant animals on the planet, yet none had ever been confirmed in the Great Salt Lake until a 2022 expedition recovered them in microbialites—rocklike mounds built by microbes on the lakebed. These forays were led by Julie Jung, then a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of U biologist Michael Werner (Jung and Werner are pictured here).

“We thought that this was probably a new species of nematode from the beginning, but it took three years of additional work to taxonomically confirm that suspicion,” says Jung, now an assistant professor at Weber State University.

How the worms got into an inland lake is a scientific whodunit, since they belong to a nematode genus normally associated with coastal areas. “That begs some more interesting, intriguing questions that you wouldn't have even known to think of until we figured out the alpha taxonomy,” Werner says. One theory suggests the lineage dates back to an ancient inland sea; another proposes birds may have transported the worms from distant saline lakes.

Whatever their origin, the nematodes may prove invaluable as sentinels for the shrinking Great Salt Lake’s ecological health. Werner and his lab remain busy characterizing other nematode species they found in the lake that are likely also new to science.