Food Web Structure at South Su, Solwara 1 and Solwara 8 Hydrothermal Vent Sites (Manus Basin)
Abstract
A robust understanding of food webs in chemoautotrophically based hydrothermal vent ecosystems requires quantifying the input of local bacterial chemoautoptrophic production vs. photosynthetically derived debris from surface waters. As an initial step towards this goal for vent communities in Papua New Guinea's Manus Basin, we use isotopic ratios of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur to describe trophic relations among 17 invertebrate genera collected in July 2008 at the Solwara 1, Solwara 8 and South Su hydrothermal vent beds. Prior stable isotope work by Erickson, Macko and Van Dover (unpublished) at Manus Basin vent sites suggests that we will see relatively depleted ä13C and ä15N values for the primary consumers Ifremeria, Alviniconcha and Olgasolaris compared to secondary consumers like the mobile, scavenging genera Munidopsis, Austinograea, Alvinocaris and Chorocaris, sessile suspension feeders of the genera Eochinolasmus and Vulcanolepas, and the predatory sponge Abyssocladia. We further hypothesize that mobile fauna will exhibit greater within-genus variance of ä13C, ä15N and ä34S values than sessile genera due to mobile organisms' ability to forage for photosynthetically derived detritus.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008AGUFM.B51D0417H
- Keywords:
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- 0408 Benthic processes (4804);
- 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics (4815);
- 0454 Isotopic composition and chemistry (1041;
- 4870);
- 0456 Life in extreme environments;
- 0491 Food webs and trophodynamics (4817)