Table 2 Known limits of life for Archaea, Bacteria and Fungi

High temperature [°C]

122 °C

Methanopyrus kandleri 116

(Takai et al. 2008)

100 °C

Geothermobacterium ferriducens

(Kashefi et al. 2002)

61 °C

Chaetomium thermophile LaTouche, Thermoascus aurantiacus, Thermomyces ibadanensis Apinis & Eggins

(Maheshwari et al. 2000)

125 MPa

Thermococcus piezophilus

(Dalmasso et al. 2016)

100 MPa

Shewanella benthica

(Kato et al. 1998)

111 MPa**

Ascomycota, Basiodiomycota

(Xu et al. 2014)

Salinity

37%

Haloferax sulfurifontis

(Elshahed et al. 2004)

35% NaCl

Halarsenatibacter silvermanii SLAS-1 T

(Oremland et al. 2005; Blum et al. 2009)

32% NaCl

Hortaea werneckii

(Gunde-Cimerman et al. 2000)

High pH

10,5

Natronolimnobius aegyptiacus

(Mesbah and Wiegel 2012; Zhao et al. 2018)

12.5

Serpentinomonas sp. B1

(Suzuki et al. 2014; Bird et al. 2021)

14

Penicillium spp.

(Dhakar et al. 2014)

Low pH

0

Picrophilus oshimae, Picrophilus torridus/Acidiplasma aeolicum strain VT

(Schleper et al. 1995; Golyshina et al. 2009; Merino et al. 2019)

1.1

Sulfobacillus sibiricus N1

(Melamud et al. 2003)

1.5

Penicillium spp.

(Dhakar et al. 2014)

Radioactivity (gamma radiations)

30 kGy

Thermococcus gammatolerans EJ3

(Jolivet et al. 2003)

30 kGy

Deinococcus hohokamensis

(Rainey et al. 2005)

6 kGy

Exophiala dermatitis

(Romsdahl et al. 2021)