Deep-sea hydrothermal vents as natural egg-case incubators at the Galapagos Rift

Salinas‐de‐León, Pelayo; Phillips, Brennan; Ebert, David A.; Shivji, Mahmood S.; Cerutti-Pereyra, Florencia; Ruck, Cassandra L; Fisher, Charles R.; Marsh, Leigh

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-20046-4

Cited by 53 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Experts ranked attention to spawning and nursery areas as important conservation interests, but with lower priority, presumably because of the limited knowledge on recruitment and nursery areas in deep-sea ecosystems. Growing knowledge of new discoveries, for example of elasmobranch use of vents and seeps as nursery habitat 92,93 , may elevate the importance of this feature.…”

Section: Measuring Essential Variables Needed For Deep-sea Ecosystemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological variables for developing a global deep-ocean monitoring and conservation strategy

et al. 2020

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The deep sea (>200 m depth) encompasses >95% of the world's ocean volume and represents the largest and least explored biome on Earth (<0.0001% of its surface). It also provides critical climate regulation and other ecosystem services. New species and ecosystems are continuously being discovered in the deep oceans, but commercial fisheries, deep-sea mining, and offshore oil and gas extractions, along with pollution and global change effects, threaten this vast under-explored frontier region. The future of both benthic and pelagic deep-sea ecosystems depends upon effective ecosystembased management strategies enhancing deep-sea conservation, yet we lack consensus on monitoring of the biological and ecological variables that reflect ecosystem status and are needed to support management and environmental decisions at a global scale. Here, we present and discuss the results of an Expert Elicitation of more than 110 deep-sea scientists to prioritize variables and parameters for the future of deep-sea monitoring. We identified five main scientific pillars that need to be further investigated for deep-ocean conservation: i) species and habitat biodiversity, ii) ecosystem function; iii) ecosystem health, impacts, and risk assessment; iv) climate change impacts, the adaptation and evolution of deep-sea life, and v) deep-sea ecosystem conservation. As observing and monitoring can provide the necessary scientific framework for scientists and policy makers to implement effective deep-sea conservation strategies at a global scale, the proposed variables should be further studied in the context of available sensor and other advanced technologies, which are becoming increasingly available.

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Section: Measuring Essential Variables Needed For Deep-sea Ecosystemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological variables for developing a global deep-ocean monitoring and conservation strategy

et al. 2020

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“…In fact, the opposite is true: "cold seeps" can be slightly warmer than the background ambient bottom waters, albeit the temperature difference is small, typically less than 1 • C (Sibuet and Olu, 1998). The link between temperature increase and nursery habitats has also been observed at low-temperature zones of a Galapagos hydrothermal vent, suggested to function as natural incubators for egg cases of deep water skates (Salinas- De-León et al, 2018). Ambient water temperature at the vent site was measured to ∼2.76 • C, and the largest number of skate egg cases was observed in bottom water temperatures where there was an increase of ∼0.25 • C. Such temperature anomalies closely match the low-scale temperature anomalies of seeps, which, in subzero conditions, are particularly relevant, first, because they would result in positive bottom water temperatures, and second, because even small increases in temperatures have been modeled to decrease the long incubation times of deep-water skates (Berestovskii, 1994;Hoff, 2010).…”

Section: Arctic Seeps Can Function As Nursery Groundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cold Seeps in a Warming Arctic: Insights for Benthic Ecology

et al. 2020

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Cold-seep benthic communities in the Arctic exist at the nexus of two extreme environments; one reflecting the harsh physical extremes of the Arctic environment and another reflecting the chemical extremes and strong environmental gradients associated with seafloor seepage of methane and toxic sulfide-enriched sediments. Recent ecological investigations of cold seeps at numerous locations on the margins of the Arctic Ocean basin reveal that seabed seepage of reduced gas and fluids strongly influence benthic communities and associated marine ecosystems. These Arctic seep communities are mostly different from both conventional Arctic benthic communities as well as cold-seep systems elsewhere in the world. They are characterized by a lack of large specialized chemo-obligate polychetes and mollusks often seen at non-Arctic seeps, but, nonetheless, have substantially higher benthic abundance and biomass compared to adjacent Arctic areas lacking seeps. Arctic seep communities are dominated by expansive tufts or meadows of siboglinid polychetes, which can reach densities up to >3 × 10 5 ind.m −2. The enhanced autochthonous chemosynthetic production, combined with reef-like structures from methane-derived authigenic carbonates, provides a rich and complex local habitat that results in aggregations of non-seep specialized fauna from multiple trophic levels, including several commercial species. Cold seeps are far more widespread in the Arctic than thought even a few years ago. They exhibit in situ benthic chemosynthetic production cycles that operate on different spatial and temporal cycles than the sunlight-driven counterpart of photosynthetic production in the ocean's surface. These systems can act as a spatio-temporal bridge for benthic communities and associated ecosystems that may otherwise suffer from a lack of consistency in food quality from the surface ocean during seasons of low production. As climate change impacts accelerate in Arctic marginal seas, photosynthetic primary production cycles are being modified, including in terms of changes in the timing, magnitude, and quality of photosynthetic carbon, whose delivery to the seabed fuels benthic communities. Furthermore, an increased northward expansion of species is expected as a consequence of warming seas. This may have implications for dispersal and evolution of both chemosymbiotic species as well as for background taxa in the entire realm of the Arctic Ocean basin and fringing seas.

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“…Although unique among non-avian dinosaurs, the evidence at hand suggests that several species of titanosaurs may have utilized geothermalism as a source of heat for egg incubation ( Grellet-Tinner & Fiorelli, 2010 ; Hechenleitner, Grellet-Tinner & Fiorelli, 2015 ). Yet, nesting in active geothermal settings is still a strategy exploited by several modern vertebrates, chiefly iguanas, snakes, birds, and even deep-sea skates ( Werner, 1983 ; Göth & Vogel, 1997 ; Guo et al, 2008 ; Salinas-de-León et al, 2018 ), because it ensures a nesting thermal stability. Such association between titanosaur nesting and palaeogeothermalism led to hypotheses that thickness of the Sanagasta eggshells was an adaptation to resist the extrinsic dissolution by pore fluids in a harsh nesting environment ( Grellet-Tinner & Fiorelli, 2010 ; Grellet-Tinner, Fiorelli & Salvador, 2012 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomechanical evidence suggests extensive eggshell thinning during incubation in the Sanagasta titanosaur dinosaurs

Hechenleitner

Taborda

Fiorelli

et al. 2018

PeerJ

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The reproduction of titanosaur dinosaurs is still a complex and debated topic. Their Late Cretaceous nesting sites are distributed worldwide and their eggs display substantial morphological variations according to the parent species. In contrast to the typical 1.3–2.0 mm thick shells common to eggs of most titanosaur species (e.g., those that nested in Auca Mahuevo, Tama, Toteşti or Boseong), the Cretaceous Sanagasta eggs of Argentina display an unusual shell thickness of up to 7.9 mm. Their oviposition was synchronous with a palaeogeothermal process, leading to the hypothesis that their extra thick eggshell was an adaptation to this particular nesting environment. Although this hypothesis has already been supported indirectly through several investigations, the mechanical implications of developing such thick shells and how this might have affected the success of hatching remains untested. Finite element analyses estimate that the breaking point of the thick-shelled Sanagasta eggs is 14–45 times higher than for other smaller and equally sized titanosaur eggs. The considerable energetic disadvantage for piping through these thick eggshells suggests that their dissolution during incubation would have been paramount for a successful hatching.

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Deep-sea hydrothermal vents as natural egg-case incubators at the Galapagos Rift

Cited by 53 publications

References 35 publications

Ecological variables for developing a global deep-ocean monitoring and conservation strategy

Ecological variables for developing a global deep-ocean monitoring and conservation strategy

Cold Seeps in a Warming Arctic: Insights for Benthic Ecology

Biomechanical evidence suggests extensive eggshell thinning during incubation in the Sanagasta titanosaur dinosaurs

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