An obvious feature of Florida scrub are patches of open sand where nothing grows. Or so it seems. Scientists from all over the world come to Highlands County. They work alongside resident scientists at Archbold Biological Station to explore the special habitat that exists nowhere else on earth: Florida scrub.

Some years ago, scientists at Archbold noticed that after a rain, tiny trails appeared in the sand. It was as if a microscopic mole were burrowing just below the surface. Equipped with nothing but curiosity and pocketknives, the scientists carefully scraped away sand above these burrows. They discovered that each trail led to a little cricket a quarter of an inch long, shiny black with reddish knees. It turned out that the cricket was completely new to science.

Archbold entomologist Dr. Mark Deyrup and Cornell entomologist Dr. Thomas Eisner described it, naming it Neotridactylus archboldi, in memory of Richard Archbold, who founded the Station in 1941. Archbold protected the scrub where scientists discovered what’s commonly called Archbold pygmy mole cricket, or scrub pygmy mole cricket.

Mark asked, “What were these crickets doing making burrows 1/8th of an inch under the sand? It turned out that they were grazing on a hidden pasture of blue-green algae growing just under the surface of sand in barren open scrub. Alerted by the crickets, scientists began to study the algal layer. Dr. Christine Hawkes of the University of Texas at Austin discovered a whole community of microscopic algae and other organisms that colonize the open scrub sand.”

Deyrup continued, “The open sand where the algae grow is sometimes extremely dry, sometimes extremely hot, and always acidic and lacking most nutrients. Organisms that can thrive in such habitats are now being studied for industrial applications in extreme conditions where there is a need for biological processes such as photosynthesis or certain kinds of chemical reactions that require live organisms.”

A few years ago, there was a movie called The Martian in which the movie’s protagonist, played by Matt Damon, survives on a crop of potatoes growing under challenging conditions.

If we ever colonize Mars, it is highly unlikely the potato will come to our rescue. Organisms such as blue-green algae, which need far less coddling, are much more likely to contribute to the growth of edible crops in an extreme environment. Places such as Florida scrub, where organisms have triumphed over the most daunting conditions, is an excellent place to explore these possibilities.

Incidentally, you could never grow potatoes in the open sand of Florida scrub.