Eglit collected the oddball organisms while she was hiking along a trail in Nova Scotia; whenever she and her colleagues are outdoors, they are almost always on the lookout for still-undiscovered microbes in a range of habitats — "from beach sands to lakes to soil at our feet," Eglit told Live Science."Dang, I saw one of those just the other day on a hike. Had I known it was interesting, I would have collected it.