Teeming with weird and wonderful life--giant clams and mussels,
tubeworms, "eyeless" shrimp, and bacteria that survive on
sulfur--deep-sea hot-water springs are found along rifts where
sea-floor spreading occurs. The theory of plate tectonics predicted
the existence of these hydrothermal vents, but they were discovered
only in 1977. Since then the sites have attracted teams of
scientists seeking to understand how life can thrive in what would
seem to be intolerable or extreme conditions of temperature and
fluid chemistry. Some suspect that these vents even hold the key to
understanding the very origins of life. Here a leading expert
provides the first authoritative and comprehensive account of this
research in a book intended for students, professionals, and
general readers. Cindy Lee Van Dover, an ecologist, brings nearly
two decades of experience and a lively writing style to the text,
which is further enhanced by two hundred illustrations, including
photographs of vent communities taken in situ.
The book begins by explaining what is known about hydrothermal
systems in terms of their deep-sea environment and their geological
and chemical makeup. The coverage of microbial ecology includes a
chapter on symbiosis. Symbiotic relationships are further developed
in a section on physiological ecology, which includes discussions
of adaptations to sulfide, thermal tolerances, and sensory
adaptations. Separate chapters are devoted to trophic relationships
and reproductive ecology. A chapter on community dynamics reveals
what has been learned about the ways in which vent communities
become established and why they persist, while a chapter on
evolution and biogeography examines patterns of species diversity
and evolutionary relationships within chemosynthetic
ecosystems.
Cognate communities such as seeps and whale skeletons come under
scrutiny for their ability to support microbial and invertebrate
communities that are ecologically and evolutionarily related to
hydrothermal faunas. The book concludes by exploring the
possibility that life originated at hydrothermal vents, a
hypothesis that has had tremendous impact on our ideas about the
potential for life on other planets or planetary bodies in our
solar system.
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