Neither are all extremophiles unicellular; protostome animals found in similar environments include the Pompeii worm, the psychrophilic Grylloblattidae (insects), Antarctic krill (a crustacean) and Tardigrades (water bears).
Fueled by the chemicals dissolved in the vent fluids, these areas are often home to large and diverse communities of thermophilic, halophilic and other extremophilic prokaryotic microorganisms (such as those of the sulfide-oxidizing Beggiatoa genus), often arranged in large bacterial mats near cold seeps.
Penelope Boston (New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology), speleologist and geomicrobiologist specialist of extremophile organisms realized sterile sampling of gypsum drillcores by making small boreholes inside large crystals under aseptic conditions.
Recent research carried out on extremophiles in Japan involved a variety of bacteria including E. coli and Paracoccus denitrificans being subject to conditions of extreme gravity.
He was co-investigator with David McKay (PI) of the NASA Johnson Space Center on the study of biomarkers and microfossils in meteorites, astromaterials and ancient terrestrial rocks, and collaborated with Kenneth Nealson (PI) from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the investigation of microbial extremophiles from some of the Earth's most hostile environments as related to the co-evolution of planets and biospheres.