USGS workers observe lava from a Kilauea volcano fissure in Leilani Estates, on Hawaii's Big Island, May 24, 2018, in Pahoa, Hawaii.

(Mario Tama/Getty Images)

At a Glance

Biologists think lava crickets are the first multicellular life form to repopulate barren lava fields.Yet the crickets lack characteristics associated with species that colonize new habitats.Scientists will soon launch a new study of the mysterious creatures.

A strange life form has appeared on the barren lava fields left by last year's eruption of the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii.

For three months beginning last May, the volcano oozed enough lava to , destroying at least 700 homes.

Scientists are headed to Hawaii this week to study what many biologists think is the first multicellular life form to make a home in the harsh, sterile lava fields.

They are looking for Caconemobius fori, the lava cricket.

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"There's the lava and the scape of this barren land, and ," Marlene Zuk, an entomologist leading the study, told Science Magazine.

Little is known about the crickets, called 'ūhini nēnē pele in Hawaiian. Scientists first described them in 1978, four years after Frank Howarth, an entomologist with Honolulu's Bishop Museum, trapped about 150 of them in old wine bottles, according to the magazine.

The entomologists learned the crickets survive on bits of decaying plants that blow into the lava fields, and albumen proteins in sea foam. They remain on the lava fields only until plants begin to grow again. Where the crickets live between eruptions remains a mystery.

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Zuk, who is also a professor at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, says the crickets lack characteristics found in other species that are often the first to colonize new habitats.

They don't fly or float, and they don't appear to be able to live in other environments. They have been found only in lava fields.

The crickets also lack wings, so they can't make music to woo a mate. How they find each other is one of the questions Zuk and her team hope to answer.