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It has been suggested that vent communities represent relict populations and that the organisms found around vents are more closely related to those at other vent systems than they are to the creatures of the surrounding deep sea floor. Vent fauna need good dispersal characteristics so as to be able to colonise newly formed vent systems. [5]
The two areas of greatest and most rapid temperature change in the oceans are the transition zone between the surface waters and the deep waters, the thermocline, and the transition between the deep-sea floor and the hot water flows at the hydrothermal vents. Thermoclines vary in thickness from a few hundred meters to nearly a thousand meters.
A black smoker or deep-sea vent is a type of hydrothermal vent found on the seabed, typically in the bathyal zone (with largest frequency in depths from 2,500 to 3,000 m (8,200 to 9,800 ft)), but also in lesser depths as well as deeper in the abyssal zone. [1]
Life flourishes around the vents - including giant tubeworms reaching lengths of 10 feet (3 meters), mussels, crabs, shrimp, fish and other organisms beautifully adapted to this extreme environment.
The evidence suggests that deep-sea hydrothermal vent viral evolutionary strategies promote prolonged host integration, favoring a form of mutualism rather than classic parasitism. [32] As hydrothermal vents outlets [clarification needed] for sub-seafloor material, there is also likely a connection between vent viruses and those in the crust. [39]
Because of the peculiar environment in which R. pachyptila thrives, this species differs greatly from other deep-sea species that do not inhabit hydrothermal vents sites; the activity of diagnostic enzymes for glycolysis, citric acid cycle and transport of electrons in the tissues of R. pachyptila is very similar to the activity of these ...
These deep-sea species are found and are endemic at hydrothermal vents. Their limpet-shaped shell consist of non-nacreous aragonite. The thick periostracum covers the shell edge. The apex is posterior, in some species projecting posteriorly, and deflected to the right. The shell has no sculpture or it consists of beads or imbricate radial ribs.
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.