Finding. Two brine-fly species in the leftover salt ponds of San Francisco Bay do not sit in the same water. Verster, Baxter and colleagues spent six months in 2024 watching Ephydra millbrae and E. gracilis and measuring salinity: each has a strong preference. They then built, from one mitochondrial locus, the fullest genealogy yet for the genus, folding in distant sites and specimens across about 40 years. Relatedness and salinity envelope talk to each other. The phylogenetic signal says the niche is partly inherited with the mitochondrial lineage.
Why this paper is on Mito.news
Because the tree is mitochondrial, and because extremophile animals are where people go looking for organelle adaptations to impossible chemistry. This abstract does not deliver those adaptations. It delivers habitat use plus a lineage map. Say that clearly.
How to read the score
Mid-fifties. High confidence in the field and genealogy claims, low OXPHOS weight. Useful if you curate mtDNA trees or halophile natural history. Skip it if you only want dysfunction.
Caveats
One locus. Industrial ponds. Phylogenetic signal is not a chloride-on-cytochrome story.
What to do with it
Update Ephydra mitochondrial notes and SF Bay salt-pond natural history. Do not write “mitochondria evolved to survive brine” from this brief. The next paper is physiology or a nuclear genome.