Cooperative Research: Studies on the Physiological Ecology of Hydrothermal Vent Chemoatotrophic Symbioses

深海喷口动物群是一种全球分布的大型古动物群。它在分类上与大多数深海生物有有限的亲缘关系。海洋群落，但它与深海的动物群有亲缘关系？海洋碳氢化合物渗漏和其他渗漏环境。深?海洋热液喷口是地球上主要的生态系统类型之一，但可能是最不为人所知的。这些群落的高生物量在很大程度上反映了一些无脊椎动物/细菌共生体利用周围深海的氧气氧化来自喷口的还原性化学物质（硫化物或甲烷）的能力。海水为初级生产提供动力。基于估算的高生物量、快速建立的喷口群落和一些喷口动物的快速生长，文献中经常出现喷口群落高产的说法。然而，目前有没有井？对任何热液喷口共生体初级生产的初步估计。本研究的中心目标是量化主要的通风口共生体与通风口流体的化学相互作用，以及这些共生体的丰度，这样一来，初级和次级生产以及其他化学交换就可以为整个共生动物组合建模。这包括确定共生生物的生产和交换率的范围以及环境条件与这些比率之间的关系。然后，环境数据将用于估计在单个时间点和整个排放口的生命周期内整个组合的原位率。这首先包括Childress小组将交换速率的研究扩展到所有主要自养共生的一系列大小。作为补充，Fisher小组将在EPR上对9'50'N的地点进行表征和取样，以便记录生物量、生物体丰度和生物体大小，并建立尺寸/重量关系。这些数据将能够估计整个共生组合的产量，它们也可以与现有的摄影数据集一起用于估计其他EPR站点的生物量，这些站点已通过摄影记录并存在化学数据集。这些结果将大大增加对喷口动物与其化学环境之间相互作用性质的理解，并使对喷口群落共生成分的生产和其他交换的首次可靠估计成为可能，为理解喷口和其他化学自养支持生态系统的功能做出重大贡献。

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.