Microscopic wonders

The photo Life in darkness, in light of change invites us to experience this habitat from the mushroom’s perspective. We get a palpable sense of the silence, darkness, and damp limestone walls of the Vale Telheiro cave, in which Luka crawled around collecting soil samples for his bachelor’s project.

Of all the many photos he took along the way, the one of the tiny mushroom basking in the sunlight from the outside world is his favorite.

“What I want to show is the world of microbiology, of fungi and bacteria – all the things rarely visible to the naked eye. I think I managed to capture that in this image. The caves appear to serve as a refuge for organisms that, perhaps thousands of years ago, sought shelter from disasters on the surface by crawling down into the darkness. Perhaps they never found their way out again, and had to adapt to this environment to survive,” Luka explains.

Meet Luka in the video interview:

What the eye sees

From the outset, Luka was interested in the visual aspects of his project.

“When I was crawling around in the cave, I always had my tools in one hand and my camera in the other. It was important to me to document my surroundings and every part of the process,” says Luka. He built his bachelor’s presentation around the images and video he captured while working on his project. The idea was to enable others to follow his journey through the cave and the laboratory and see what he saw.

“As soon as I entered the cave, my mind went into overdrive: How can I capture this visually? We’re all drawn to the visual. In the fast-paced world of research, it’s important to stop and take the time to reflect before moving on to the next stage. The idea behind the presentation was to bring the viewer with me, right from the beginning of my journey into the darkness, so they could bear witness to all the challenges, see the results, and consider the future prospects. And we would then re-emerge together into the light. So, I took photos of everything I could.”

Protecting life in the dark

“I had grown mushrooms before I started work on my bachelor’s project. So, I thought it sounded interesting when my supervisors, Michael Poulsen and Kasun Bodawatta, asked if I wanted to write my bachelor’s thesis as part of an interdisciplinary project studying the climate and life in the Vale Telheiro cave,” says Luka.

The cave has become the center of a major interdisciplinary research project. Some of the participants are studying the air in the cave; others the organisms that live there. The project is designed to shed light on this closed ecosystem, about which we know little, and on which the outside world may have started to exert an influence. Carbon dioxide levels in the cave have risen significantly, while methane levels fall the deeper you go. At the moment, the researchers don’t know whether these changes have been caused by human activity, nor whether they will have a positive or negative effect on life in the cave.

“My role was to use soil samples to study the cave’s microorganism communities back in the lab. I was also fortunate enough to be invited to participate in fieldwork, which has had a huge impact on me. I was able to experience life in the cave directly – I could see, feel and smell it all.

At home, in the Department of Biology lab, Luka cultivated samples from the cave to study the microbes’ growth conditions, how they interact, and their functional roles in the ecosystem. This enabled him to provide insight into aspects of bacterial and fungal diversity in the Vale Telheiro cave.

“It’s important that we know not only what is living in the cave, but also how it lives, so we can work out how best to protect it.”

The lure of caves

Luka is now doing a master’s degree in microbiology and considering potential thesis topics.

“I’m wrestling with what my next project is going to be about,” he says.

As he talks enthusiastically about late nights in the lab looking at the many fungi and bacteria and wondering about their diversity, it’s clear that Luka has developed a passion for the subject. His bachelor’s project also led to new collaborations involving Center Director and Professor Riikka Rinnan and PhD student Kajsa Roslund from the Center of Excellence for Volatile Interactions (VOLT), who are researching the airborne substances that make up the cave’s atmospheric conditions.

“I’ve always been fascinated by nature, but the fact that I’ve gone from making cardboard posters about orangutans in fourth grade to communicating my research to so many people surprises even me.”