Endofaunal communities associated with "organic islands" in the seafloor: a case study in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean

• Grant number: 22/00411-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2022
• End date: September 30, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Oceanography - Biological Oceanography
• Principal Investigator: Fabiane Gallucci
• Grantee: Ana Karoline Frutuoso de Ávila
• Host Institution: Instituto do Mar (IMar). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Baixada Santista. Santos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Organic islands represented by whale carcass and wood logs provide organic enrichment which is essential to the deep-sea ecosystems. The high availability of energy provided throughout the stages of organic matter degradation attracts a dense community of opportunistic organisms and specialists in these environments and supports the development of sulfide niches. Due to the heterogeneity of these environments, substrate colonization can be influenced by many conditions such as substrate type and food resource availability. The aim of the study is to describe the composition of endofaunal communities associated with whalebones and wood logs of different wood types Cedro rosa (Cedrela fissilis), Caixeta (Tabebuia cassinoides) e Garapeira (Apuleia Ieiocarpa) experimentally deployed at 550 meters depth in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean. Whalebone and wood logs are expected to present fauna that are specialized and specific to these environments, and also to share chemosynthetic fauna with other organic and reductive environments. Particularly in wood logs, density and hardness characteristics of the wood are expected to influence the colonization and composition of associated communities. With this study, we expect to contribute to the understanding of the structure of communities that colonize organic substrates, as well as their influence on the diversity and connectivity of organisms dependent on chemosynthetic environments in the deep-sea, especially on organic falls.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

AVILA, ANA K. F.; SHIMABUKURO, MAURICIO; COUTO, DANIEL M.; ALFARO-LUCAS, JOAN M.; SUMIDA, PAULO Y. G.; GALLUCCI, FABIANE. Whale falls as chemosynthetic refugia: a perspective from free-living deep-sea nematodes. FRONTIERS IN MARINE SCIENCE, v. 10, p. 9-pg., 2023-05-02. (11/50185-1, 22/00411-0, 19/18526-5)