Studies on the Physiological Ecology of Hydrothermal Vent Chemoautotrophic Symbioses

热液喷口化能自养共生体的生理生态学研究

• 批准号: 9632861
• 负责人: James Childress
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Barbara
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-09-01 至 2001-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9632861&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Studies; Physiological; Ecology; Hydrothermal; Vent

9632861 CHILDRESS The vent fauna is an ancient fauna of global distribution in the deep-sea. It has limited taxonomic affinities to other deep sea communities, and yet it has affinities to the faunas of deep-sea hydrocarbon seeps and other seep environments. This deep-sea vent environment may have been a refuge protecting vent taxa from the extinction events which had great impacts on other communities. Thus, deep-sea hydrothermal vents are one of the major ecosystem types on the earth, but probably the least known. The existence of these communities depends upon the ability of a few invertebrate/ bacteria symbioses to oxidize reduced chemical species (sulfide or methane) from the vents using oxidants (oxygen or nitrate) from the surrounding deep-sea water to power primary production. Thus the capacities for interaction of the symbioses with the chemical properties of vent environments is fundamental to the primary production which supports these ecosystems. The central objective of this project is to describe and quantify the chemical interactions of the tubeworm Riftia pachyptila with the vent fluids which flow over it so that these interactions can be modeled for entire assemblages of animals. This project includes development of indices of growth rate, primary production, condition, and environmental conditions based on measurements made on freshly collected worms. The project has 3 components: 1) Survey of diverse vent and seep environments to determine the responses of chemoautotrophic symbioses to widely differing conditions. The objective is to quantify a broad range of parameters on samples from freshly captured worms and to correlate these with environmental characteristics so that the in situ interactions of the worms with the vent fluids can be estimated. 2) Shipboard studies of the physiology supporting autotrophy in symbiotic vent animals. The objective of these studies is to measure the interactions of Riftia with the various chemical parameters, a s well as the effects of temperature on these interactions, to develop an understanding of the functioning of the worms. Long term maintenance of worms in pressure aquaria for growth studies is part of these projected studies. 3) The observation and measurement of temporal changes at 13 N. This includes deployment of temperature recorders to measure the variation in conditions and selected observations of the biota to describe the changes over time. The objective is to describe the niche of the tubeworm on longer time scales so that primary production and interactions with vent fluids can be estimated over longer time periods. This project will greatly increase our understanding of the nature of the interactions between the vent animals and their chemical environments, contributing to our understanding of the functioning of the vent and other chemoautotrophically supported ecosystems.

9632861儿童喷口动物群是全球分布于深海的一种古老的动物群。它与其他深海群落的分类亲缘关系有限，但它与深海碳氢化合物渗漏和其他渗漏环境的动物群有亲缘关系。这种深海喷口环境可能是保护喷口类群免受对其他群落产生重大影响的灭绝事件的避难所。因此，深海热液喷口是地球上主要的生态系统类型之一，但可能是最不为人所知的。这些群落的存在取决于少数无脊椎动物/细菌共生体利用周围深海水域的氧化剂(氧气或硝酸盐)氧化喷口还原的化学物种(硫化物或甲烷)的能力，为初级生产提供动力。因此，共生体与喷口环境的化学性质相互作用的能力是支持这些生态系统的初级生产的基础。该项目的中心目标是描述和量化厚壁管虫与流经其上的喷口液体之间的化学相互作用，以便可以对整个动物集合模拟这些相互作用。该项目包括根据对新收集的蠕虫进行的测量，制定生长速度、初级生产、条件和环境条件指数。该项目包括三个部分：1)调查不同的喷口和渗漏环境，以确定化学自养共生生物对差异很大的条件的反应。其目的是对新捕获的蠕虫样本的一系列参数进行量化，并将这些参数与环境特征相关联，以便能够估计蠕虫与喷口流体的现场相互作用。2)共生喷口动物支持自养的生理学研究。这些研究的目的是测量Riftia与各种化学参数的相互作用，以及温度对这些相互作用的影响，以了解蠕虫的功能。在加压水族箱中长期保持蠕虫以进行生长研究是这些计划研究的一部分。3)观察和测量13 N处的时间变化，这包括部署温度记录器来测量条件的变化，以及选择生物群的观测来描述随时间的变化。其目的是在更长的时间尺度上描述管虫的生态位，以便能够在更长的时间段内估计初级生产量和与喷口流体的相互作用。这个项目将大大增加我们对喷口动物与其化学环境之间相互作用的性质的了解，有助于我们了解喷口和其他化学自养支持的生态系统的功能。