Collaborative Research: Studies on the Physiological Ecology of Hydrothermal Vent Chemoautotrophic Symbioses

合作研究：热液喷口化学自养共生的生理生态学研究

• 批准号: 0002464
• 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: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-09-01 至 2004-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0002464&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Studies; Physiological; Ecology

Vent fauna is a largely ancient fauna of global distribution in the deep?sea. It has limited taxonomic affinities to most deep?sea communities, and yet it has affinities to the faunas of deep?sea hydrocarbon seeps and other seep environments. Deep?sea hydrothermal vents are one of the major ecosystem types on the earth, but probably the least known. The high biomasses of these communities largely reflect the ability of a few invertebrate/bacteria symbioses to oxidize reduced chemical species (sulfide or methane) from the vents using oxygen from the surrounding deep?sea water to power primary production. The allegation that vent communities are highly productive is often seen in the literature based on the high biomasses estimated, the rapid establishment of vent communities and the rapid growth of some vent animals. However, there are currently no well?founded estimates of primary production by the symbioses at any hydrothermal vents. The central objective of this study is to quantify the major vent symbioses' chemical interactions with the vent fluids and the abundances of those symbioses in such a way that primary and secondary production and other chemical exchanges can be modeled for entire assemblages of symbiotic animals. This involves determining the range of production and exchange rates of the symbioses and the relations between environmental conditions and those rates. Environmental data will then be used to estimate in situ rates for entire assemblages at single points in time and over the lifetime of vent sites. This consists first of the Childress group expanding its study of the rates of exchanges to a range of sizes of all the major autotrophic symbioses. Complementing this, the Fisher group will characterize and sample sites at 9'50'N on the EPR so that the biomass, organism abundance and organism sizes are documented and size/weight relationships are developed. These data will enable the estimating of production in entire symbiotic assemblages and they can also be used with existing photographic datasets to estimate biomasses at other EPR sites which have been photographically documented and for which chemical datasets exist. The results will greatly increase the understanding of the nature of the interactions between the vent animals and their chemical environments and enable the first solid estimates of production and other exchanges by the symbiotic components of vent communities, making a major contribution to the understanding of the functioning of vent and other chemoautotrophically supported ecosystems.

热液喷口动物群是一种古老的、全球性分布的深海动物群。海它在分类学上与最深处的亲缘关系有限？海洋生物群落，但它与深海动物群有密切关系？海洋碳氢化合物渗漏和其它渗漏环境。很深？海洋热液喷口是地球上主要的生态系统类型之一，但可能是最鲜为人知的。这些社区的高生物量在很大程度上反映了一些无脊椎动物/细菌共生体的能力，氧化还原化学物种（硫化物或甲烷）从喷口使用氧气从周围的深？海水为初级生产提供动力。在文献中，经常可以看到喷口群落具有高生产力的说法，其依据是估计的高生物量、喷口群落的迅速建立和一些喷口动物的迅速增长。但是，目前还没有好？建立了对任何热液喷口共生生物初级生产的估计。本研究的中心目标是量化主要喷口共生体与喷口流体的化学相互作用以及这些共生体的丰度，以便能够为共生动物的整个组合建立初级和次级生产以及其他化学交换的模型。这涉及到确定共生体的生产和交换速率的范围以及环境条件与这些速率之间的关系。然后，将利用环境数据估计喷口所在地整个生命周期内单个时间点的整个组合的原地排放率。首先，奇尔德里斯小组将交换率的研究扩展到所有主要的自养共生体的大小范围。作为补充，费舍尔小组将在EPR上的北纬9 '50'处对地点进行表征和取样，以便记录生物量、生物丰度和生物大小，并建立大小/重量关系。这些数据将使整个共生组合的生产估计，他们也可以使用现有的摄影数据集，以估计生物量在其他EPR网站已被记录和化学数据集存在。研究结果将大大增进对喷口动物与其化学环境之间相互作用性质的了解，并使人们能够对喷口群落共生组成部分的生产和其他交换作出第一次可靠的估计，从而为了解喷口和其他化能自养生态系统的功能作出重大贡献。