cave bacteria

One of the most intriguing morphologies that I've seen in the scanning electron microscopy images that we've done from cave samples is the beads-on-a-string (you'll find several in the Gruta da Terra Mole album). They are the right size for bacteria (1 micron in diameter), but they don't really match anything in Bergey's. A colleague found a very similar morphology in soil from Germany. Because the "beads" are spaced out, they are different than those seen in such species as the Streptococcus.