extremophile

See also: extrêmophile

English

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extremophile

Wikipedia

From extreme +‎ -o- +‎ -phile.

extremophile (plural extremophiles)

(ecology) An organism that lives under extreme conditions of temperature, salinity etc; commercially important as a source of enzymes that operate under similar conditions.
- 2003, Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, BCA, page 207:
  They had found the world's first extremophiles – organisms that could live in water that had previously been assumed to be much too hot or acid or choked with sulphur to bear life.
- 2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 95:
  Lichens are 'extremophiles', organisms able to live, from our point of view, in other worlds.

organism that lives under extreme conditions