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The hydrothermal vents are recognized as a type of chemosynthetic based ecosystems (CBE) where primary productivity is fuelled by chemical compounds as energy sources instead of light (chemoautotrophy). [29] Hydrothermal vent communities are able to sustain such vast amounts of life because vent organisms depend on chemosynthetic bacteria for food.
In 1980 Daniel Desbruyères and Lucien Laubier, just a few years after the discovery of the first hydrothermal vent system, identified one of the most heat-tolerant animals on Earth — Alvinella pompejana, the Pompeii worm. [1] It was described as a deep-sea polychaete that resides in tubes near hydrothermal vents, along the seafloor.
This contrasts with the fact that deep-sea species usually show very low metabolic rates, which in turn suggests that low water temperature and high pressure in the deep sea do not necessarily limit the metabolic rate of animals and that hydrothermal vents sites display characteristics that are completely different from the surrounding ...
Beside being a hotbed for organic compounds, the newfound site in the Arctic Ocean may be rich in copper and gold deposits.
The hydrothermal vent microbial community includes all unicellular organisms that live and reproduce in a chemically distinct area around hydrothermal vents. These include organisms in the microbial mat , free floating cells, or bacteria in an endosymbiotic relationship with animals.
P. fumarii is a unicellular organism from the domain Archaea living in the hydrothermal vents in black smokers along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. These organisms can live at 106 °C at a pH of 5.5. These organisms can live at 106 °C at a pH of 5.5.
Pyrococcus furiosus is a strictly anaerobic, heterotrophic, sulfur-reducing archaea originally isolated from heated sediments in Vulcano, Italy by Fiala and Stetter. It is noted for its rapid doubling time of 37 minutes under optimal conditions, meaning that every 37 minutes the number of individual organisms is multiplied by two, yielding an exponential growth curve.
Thermococcus litoralis (T. litoralis) is a species of Archaea that is found around deep-sea hydrothermal vents as well as shallow submarine thermal springs and oil wells. [2] [3] [4] It is an anaerobic organotroph hyperthermophile that is between 0.5–3.0 μm (20–118 μin) in diameter. [2]