Deep sea animals

Viscosity depends on temperature and pressure. It decreases with increasing temperature. For essentially all liquids, the viscosity increases with increasing pressure, but not so for water. For H2O (L) the viscosity is lower at higher pressure and this, for instance, is advantageous for the energy household of deep sea animals. 

In terms of animals, most vent species are either vestimentiferan worms, annelids, mol-lusks, or arthropods, whereas the typical deep-sea biota is dominated by echinoderms,... 

Bioluminescence is the production of light by living systems. The best-known example of this phenomenon is the characteristic glow of the firefly, but other luminous species include bacteria, fungi and other animals such as jellyfish, scale-worms, deep-sea squid, prawn and fish. In animals bioluminescence is used as a diversionary tactic when disturbed, to attract prey and of course as a mating signal during courtship. 

Tables I to III provide a summary of some representative data for total arsenic concentrations in sediments, marine algae, and marine animals. There can be considerable variation in the arsenic levels in these samples, in contrast to the levels in seawater, which are reasonably uniform in the world s oceans at about 0.5-2 /ug/liter (9,10). For sediments, there is perhaps a tendency for arsenic concentrations to be lower in samples from coastal regions and estuaries compared with deep-sea sediments. Industrial discharges of arsenic-enriched effluents can, however, result in arsenic contamination of near-shore sediments...

This is indeed the second important biological role of bioluminescence, common among deep sea fishes. Many small animals are attracted by the... 

A scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution observes that it is fortunate that deep-sea organisms can adapt to such extreme pressures—otherwise, dead plant and animal debris that falls to the ocean bottom probably would not decay, It is surmised that barophilic bacteria participate in recycling organic materials in the ocean. 

Life depends on chemical reactions. Chemical reactions take place when plants and animals grow, digest their food, and even when they rest. Some of the chemical reactions that occur in nature take place in the most extreme conditions on the planet, such as near deep-sea vents or in Antarctica. Some reactions are so complex that scientists are not yet sure how they happen. 

Around deep-sea vents lives a very interesting species of animal the tubeworm. Some tubeworms can grow to be almost 8 feet (3 m) long. They were first discovered in the 1970s around some hydrothermal vents near the Galapagos Islands off the coast of South America. Since then many tubeworms have been found at deep-sea vents all over the world. 

Bromophenols represent an enormous class of marine natural products, particularly from acorn worms of families Polychaete and Hemichordata. These sediment dwelling animals can live anywhere from the intertidal zone to a depth of 1,400 m (2542, 2543). Thus, one function of 2,4,6-tribromophenol produced by the deep-sea... 

Jumars, P. A., D. H. Penry, J. A. Baross, M. J. Perry, and B. W. Frost. 1989. Closing the microbial loop Dissolved carbon pathway to heterotrophic bacteria from incomplete digestion and absorption in animals. Deep Sea Research 4 483-495. 

In the present ocean calcium carbonate formation is dominated by pelagic plants (coccolithophores) and animals (foraminifera, pteropods, and heteropods). Examples are presented in Figure 4.13. Although benthic organisms are important in shoal water sediments, and for dating and geochemical studies in the deep sea sediments, they constitute only a minor portion of the calcium carbonate removed from deep seawater. Shoal water carbonates are discussed in detail in Chapter 5. 

Harbison G.R. and Gilmer R.W. (1986) Effects of animal behavior on sediment trap collections Implications for the calculation of aragonite fluxes. Deep-Sea Res. 33, 1017-1024. 

Among differently adapted species of fishes and invertebrates, the ABT of mitochondrial respiration varies regularly with adaptation temperature (figure 7.23, lower panel). The animals that were compared included deep-sea invertebrates from both warm (hydrothermal vent) and cold habitats plus several shallow occurring marine invertebrates and fishes adapted to widely different temperatures, including the Antarctic fish Trematomus ber-nacchii (boxed + symbol Dahlhoff et al., 1991 Weinstein and Somero, 1998). Also... 

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