Scientists weigh up deep-sea microbes at volcanos

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Xinhua| 2018-06-12 07:41:04|Editor: Liu

WASHINGTON, June 11 (Xinhua) -- A new study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that deep-sea hydrothermal vent microbial communities worldwide could produce more than 4,000 tons of organic carbon each day.

That is roughly the same amount of carbon in 200 blue whales, making these ecosystems among the ocean's most productive on a per volume basis, according to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), a private, non-profit organization in the United States.

Those surprisingly productive microbe-based ecosystems play an important role supporting life higher up the food chain in the food-starved deep ocean, according to the study.

"We found that microbial communities living below the seafloor at vents can generate similar amounts of carbon as the well-known animal communities above seafloor, like the tube worms, which are known to be as productive as rainforest ecosystems," said Stefan Sievert, a microbiologist at WHOI and senior author of the study.

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