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The Deep-Sea Chemoautotroph Microbial World as Experienced by the Mediterranean Metazoans Through Time

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Advances in Stromatolite Geobiology

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences ((LNEARTH,volume 131))

Abstract

This paper is focused upon the Miocene-to-Recent deep-sea chemosynthetic ecosystems of the Mediterranean basin with emphasis on their metazoan associates. The life ingredients of this story are basically the “microbes” and the “metazoans”, in particular molluscs, whose mutual interplay resulted in a superb variety of situations in response to geologic and oceanographic factors directing the production and availability of geofluids usable by microbial consortia. The astounding complexity and diversity of modern metazoan-bearing deep-sea ecosystems inhabiting the Mediterranean is a step of a long journey whose beginning dates back to more than 3 billion years ago and whose major events are resumed below.

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Acknowledgements

This article is an overgrowth of an invited presentation to the International Kalkowsky-Symposium, held in Goettingen, October 4–11, 2008. My warmest thanks go to Joachim Reitner for inviting me to the symposium and for his patience while waiting for this article. Lorenzo Angeletti helped with photography and preparation of figures and Alessandro Ceregato with bibliography. Special thanks to Paul Aharon, Stefano Conti, Joern Peckmann, Marco Sami, Gian Battista Vai and all microbes and metazoans associated with cold seeps. This paper is a contribution to the EU Hermione programme (contract number 226354) and is ISMAR-Bologna scientific contribution n. 1670.

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    Marco Taviani

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Taviani, M. (2011). The Deep-Sea Chemoautotroph Microbial World as Experienced by the Mediterranean Metazoans Through Time. In: Advances in Stromatolite Geobiology. Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences, vol 131. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10415-2_18

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