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Lake Untersee is a lake in Antarctica filled with ice. Although it does not have that many animals and plants, it has rich ecosystems full of microorganisms which give hints to the way that life evolved on earth. Many colonies of bacteria form in two-dimensional shapes throughout the layers of the ice. The top layer of the ice has photosynthetic organisms, mainly cyanobacteria. After extracting the samples, they found that they were made of protists of many types, archaea, and bacteria. It appears that cyanobacteria play a major role in the structures. Looking through all this single-celled life allows scientists to understand how early life interacted and the process by which more life evolved.

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