The Pink Specter of the Arsenic Lakes High in the Andean Altiplano, where the borders of Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina converge, lies a landscape that seems more Martian than terrestrial. At elevations exceeding 4,000 meters, the air is thin, the ultraviolet radiation is searing, and the landscape is dominated by salars —massive salt flats punctuated by lagoons of hyper-saline, caustic water. In these environments, where most life would perish within minutes due to the extreme alkalinity and high concentrations of naturally occurring arsenic, thrives one of nature’s most specialized extremophiles: the Andean Flamingo ( Phoenicoparrus andinus ). Recent biological surveys and genomic studies have begun to unravel how this striking avian species survives, and indeed flourishes, in a world defined by chemical toxicity and thermal extremes. ...