Development and Employment of New Approaches to the Study ofHydrothermal Vent Organisms

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Dr. Fisher will initiate three types of investigations of hydrothermal vent invertebrates with chemoautotrophic symbionts. These studies will address specific major gaps in our understanding of the species at 13N on the East Pacific Rise; the techniques developed will be useful in future investigations at any hydrothermal vent site with bivalves or tubeworms. The first is a determination of the in-situ tube growth rate of the tubeworm Tevnia jerichonana, and associated measurements which allow conversion of these measurement to growth on a weight basis. The second involves development and employment of new and modified techniques for physiological investigations using intact gill preparations (from B. thermophilus) incubated under pressure as models of intact animals, and isolated bacterial preparations to study symbiont physiology. The third series of experiments are studies of vestimentiferan symbiont concentration and autotrophic carbon fixation rate by R. pachyptila symbionts, and expand previous studies to a second species of vestimentiferan for comparative purposes.