Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-dlb68 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-15T19:45:35.761Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Sulphur sources for chemoautotrophic nutrition of shallow water vestimentiferan tubeworms in Kagoshima Bay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2002

Tomoyuki Miura
Affiliation:
Faculty of Agriculture, Miyazaki University, Gakuen-Kibanadai-Nishi 1-1, Miyazaki 889-2192, Japan
Munetomo Nedachi
Affiliation:
Faculty of Sciences, Kagoshima University, Japan
Jun Hashimoto
Affiliation:
JAMSTEC, 2–15 Natsushima, Yokosuka 237-0061, Japan
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

To elucidate the sulphur sources for chemoautotrophy by the symbiotic bacteria of a vestimentiferan tubeworm, Lamellibrachia satsuma, living in Kagoshima Bay at depths of 80–100 m, we analysed the sulphur isotopic ratios of the animal tissues and compared them with environmental sulphur species collected in the field. Animals that had been maintained in an aquarium for over a year and supplied a known sulphur source were also investigated. The gas emitted from volcanic source in Kagoshima Bay contained rather heavy sulphide (+12·7 to +22·9‰ δ34S) compared with deep-sea hydrothermal vent systems (0 to +5‰). The tissue of the tubeworms contained very light sulphide (−21·5 to −25·9‰). It is inferred from the analysis of the aquarium-maintained specimens that the fractionation by the tubeworm or its symbiont was <1·5‰. The sulphur source assimilated by the tubeworms in the field is therefore inferred to have δ ratio −19·1 to −24·6‰. This means that only 9·7 to 25·0% of the sulphur in the worm tissues can be derived from the volcanic gas and the rest must come from other sources, such as microbial activity in the bottom sediment.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2002 Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom