Dataset Information

The early conversion of deep-sea wood falls into chemosynthetic hotspots revealed by in situ monitoring.

ABSTRACT: Wood debris on the ocean floor harbor flourishing communities, which include invertebrate taxa thriving in sulfide-rich habitats belonging to hydrothermal vent and methane seep deep-sea lineages. The formation of sulfidic niches from digested wood material produced by woodborers has been known for a long time, but the temporal dynamics and sulfide ranges encountered on wood falls remains unknown. Here, we show that wood falls are converted into sulfidic hotpots, before the colonization by xylophagaid bivalves. Less than a month after immersion at a depth of 520?m in oxygenated seawater the sulfide concentration increased to millimolar levels inside immersed logs. From in situ experiments combining high-frequency chemical and video monitoring, we document the rapid development of a microbial sulfur biofilm at the surface of wood. These findings highlight the fact that sulfide is initially produced from the labile components of wood and supports chemosynthesis as an early pathway of energy transfer to deep-sea wood colonists, as suggested by recent aquarium studies. The study furthermore reveals that woodborers promote sulfide-oxidation at the periphery of their burrows, thus, not only facilitating the development of sulfidic zones in the surrounding of degraded wood falls, but also governing sulfur-cycling within the wood matrix.

SUBMITTER: Kalenitchenko D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5772046 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The early conversion of deep-sea wood falls into chemosynthetic hotspots revealed by in situ monitoring.

Kalenitchenko D D Péru E E Contreira Pereira L L Petetin C C Galand P E PE Le Bris N N

Scientific reports 20180117 1

Wood debris on the ocean floor harbor flourishing communities, which include invertebrate taxa thriving in sulfide-rich habitats belonging to hydrothermal vent and methane seep deep-sea lineages. The formation of sulfidic niches from digested wood material produced by woodborers has been known for a long time, but the temporal dynamics and sulfide ranges encountered on wood falls remains unknown. Here, we show that wood falls are converted into sulfidic hotpots, before the colonization by xyloph ...[more]

PMID: 29343757

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Project description:Sinking of large organic food falls i.e. kelp, wood and whale carcasses to the oligotrophic deep-sea floor promotes the establishment of locally highly productive and diverse ecosystems, often with specifically adapted benthic communities. However, the fragmented spatial distribution and small area poses challenges for the dispersal of their microbial and faunal communities. Our study focused on the temporal dynamics and spatial distributions of sunken wood bacterial communities, which were deployed in the vicinity of different cold seeps in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Norwegian deep-seas. By combining fingerprinting of bacterial communities by ARISA and 454 sequencing with in situ and ex situ biogeochemical measurements, we show that sunken wood logs have a locally confined long-term impact (> 3y) on the sediment geochemistry and community structure. We confirm previous hypotheses of different successional stages in wood degradation including a sulphophilic one, attracting chemosynthetic fauna from nearby seep systems. Wood experiments deployed at similar water depths (1100-1700 m), but in hydrographically different oceanic regions harbored different wood-boring bivalves, opportunistic faunal communities, and chemosynthetic species. Similarly, bacterial communities on sunken wood logs were more similar within one geographic region than between different seas. Diverse sulphate-reducing bacteria of the Deltaproteobacteria, the sulphide-oxidizing bacteria Sulfurovum as well as members of the Acidimicrobiia and Bacteroidia dominated the wood falls in the Eastern Mediterranean, while Alphaproteobacteria and Flavobacteriia colonized the Norwegian Sea wood logs. Fauna and bacterial wood-associated communities changed between 1 to 3 years of immersion, with sulphate-reducers and sulphide-oxidizers increasing in proportion, and putative cellulose degraders decreasing with time. Only 6% of all bacterial genera, comprising the core community, were found at any time on the Eastern Mediterranean sunken wooden logs. This study suggests that biogeography and succession play an important role for the composition of bacteria and fauna of wood-associated communities, and that wood can act as stepping-stones for seep biota.

Project description:BackgroundThe biological communities that inhabit chemosynthetic environments exist in an ephemeral and patchily distributed habitat with unique physicochemical properties that lead to high endemicity. Consequently, the maintenance and recovery from perturbation of the populations in these habitats is, arguably, mainly regulated by larval supply and recruitment.Methodology/principal findingsWE USE DATA FROM THE PUBLISHED SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE TO: (1) compare the magnitudes of and variability in larval supply and settlement and recruitment at hydrothermal vents, seeps, and whale, wood and kelp falls; (2) explore factors that affect these life history processes, when information is available; and (3) explore taxonomic affinities in the recruit assemblages of the different chemosynthetic habitats, using multivariate statistical techniques. Larval supply at vents can vary across segments by several orders of magnitude for gastropods; for bivalves, supply is similar at vents on different segments, and at cold seeps. The limited information on larval development suggests that dispersal potential may be highest for molluscs from cold seeps, intermediate for siboglinids at vents and lowest for the whale-bone siboglinid Osedax. Settlement is poorly studied and only at vents and seeps, but tends to be highest near an active source of emanating fluid in both habitats. Rate of recruitment at vents is more variable among studies within a segment than among segments. Across different chemosynthetic habitats, recruitment rate of bivalves is much more variable than that of gastropods and polychaetes. Total recruitment rate ranges only between 0.1 and 1 ind dm(-2) d(-1) across all chemosynthetic habitats, falling above rates in the non-reducing deep sea. The recruit assemblages at vents, seeps and kelp falls have lower taxonomic breadth, and include more families and genera that have many species more closely related to each other than those at whale and wood falls. Vents also have the most uneven taxonomic structure, with fewer recruits represented by higher taxonomic levels (phyla, orders, classes) compared to seeps and wood and kelp falls, whereas the opposite is true at whale falls.Conclusions/significanceBased on our evaluation of the literature, the patterns and regulatory factors of the early history processes in chemosynthetic environments in the deep sea remain poorly understood. More research focused on these early life history stages will allow us to make inferences about the ecological and biogeographic linkages among the reducing habitats in the deep sea.

Dataset Information

The early conversion of deep-sea wood falls into chemosynthetic hotspots revealed by in situ monitoring.

Publications

The early conversion of deep-sea wood falls into chemosynthetic hotspots revealed by in situ monitoring.

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