Abstract
The deep sea is home to many species that have longer life spans than their shallow-water counterparts. This trend is primarily related to the decline in metabolic rates with temperature as depth increases. However, at bathyal depths, the cold-seep vestimentiferan tubeworm species Lamellibrachia luymesi and Seepiophila jonesi reach extremely old ages beyond what is predicted by the simple scaling of life span with body size and temperature. Here, we use individual-based models based on in situ growth rates to show that another species of cold-seep tubeworm found in the Gulf of Mexico, Escarpia laminata, also has an extraordinarily long life span, regularly achieving ages of 100–200 years with some individuals older than 300 years. The distribution of results from individual simulations as well as whole population simulations involving mortality and recruitment rates support these age estimates. The low 0.67% mortality rate measurements from collected populations of E. laminata are similar to mortality rates in L. luymesi and S. jonesi and play a role in evolution of the long life span of cold-seep tubeworms. These results support longevity theory, which states that in the absence of extrinsic mortality threats, natural selection will select for individuals that senesce slower and reproduce continually into their old age.
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Acknowledgements
This research was one part of a larger study led by Dr. Jim Brooks of TDI-Brooks that was jointly funded under the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), contract #0105CT39187, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (NOAA OER). Many thanks to Erin Becker, Jeremy Potter, Liz Goehring, and Cindy Peterson for spending countless hours measuring tubeworms and to Stephanie Lessard-Pilon for her preliminary analysis of the tubeworm tag data. Collecting these tubeworms would not have been possible without the assistance of the captains and crew of the R/V Atlantis and NOAA Ship Ronald Brown and the crew and pilots of the DSV Alvin and ROV Jason II. We would also like to thank our anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on improving this manuscript.
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Communicated by: Sven Thatje
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Durkin, A., Fisher, C.R. & Cordes, E.E. Extreme longevity in a deep-sea vestimentiferan tubeworm and its implications for the evolution of life history strategies. Sci Nat 104, 63 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-017-1479-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-017-1479-z